Neal's Soapbox

I think one of the most misunderstood words is the word equality. If you type equality into Google and hit enter, the very first definition you’ll find is: the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities. While I agree wholeheartedly with the last two, I’m divided on the idea of equality of status. Some are born into abject poverty while others are born into wealth and affluence; but at the same time we are all human beings and should be treated equally based not upon our status on the social ladder, rather, we should be treated equally by how we live our lives; by our actions and deeds.

When each of us makes our entrance into this world we are unaware of whether we are born into a life of poverty or wealth; so in that we are all equal. Also, unless we are born with some form of birth defect, we all come into this world with two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose, two ears, and most importantly, a brain; so in that we are equal as well.

Human beings are amazing creatures; we are both frail and capable of great feats of strength. If you take an ant or a spider and drop it from shoulder height, it will just crawl off as if nothing had happened. Do that to a human from a comparable height and they would break every bone in their body; and most likely die. Yet athletes accomplish great feats of strength and skill all the time; artists create images which cause us to gaze in wonder at them; musicians write songs which stir the emotions, and scientists have done amazing things; such as breaking the bonds which held us to planet Earth and taken mankind into space and given him a glimpse into the inner workings of the atom.

Show me one spider or ant that has accomplished any of these feats. What is it that separates us from the spiders and ants? Why, it is the human mind and the opportunity to put it to use to the fullest extent of its abilities. I have absolutely nothing against equal opportunity for all. What I do have problems with is mandated equality based not upon skill and ability, but upon what one’s skin color or gender happens to be.

I’ve heard time and time again people tell me that they are entitled to a job. No, that is wrong. They are entitled to apply for a job and be given just consideration for it based upon how well their skill set and abilities meet the requirements the job imposes upon those who perform it. If you can’t meet the standards for a particular job you should not be put on the payroll just to fulfill your twisted vision of what equality is. And, if you are hired, your continued employment should in no way be based upon your vision of what equality is; rather it should be based upon whether or not you perform up to the standards set for that position.

I cannot count the times that I have been told things like, “Why should I work as hard as you when they won’t give me a decent pay raise”, or “Don’t work so hard, you make me look bad.” What a bunch of rubbish! Sure, whatever company you work for might be tight with the pay raises, but nonetheless you are on their payroll and you are taking their money to do a job; why don’t you have the integrity to do it properly and to the best of your ability? One of the things that irks me is laziness; the unwillingness to give whatever you are doing 100% of your effort. You say you want equality, why don’t you begin by showing some equality in your work ethics?

But equality is much more than just how well we do our jobs, it covers a wide range of subjects and many of them are disregarded, while the discussion of others is purposefully avoided.

There are many in America today who proclaim that they believe in forced equality, or to use the politically correct term; Social Justice. I find the term Social Justice, and what it implies, to be an oxymoron. Justice is the fair and equal treatment and application of the law. How is it justice to deny a person a position which they have earned simply because they are not the proper race or gender? How is it justice to deny someone the full enjoyment of the fruits of their labors just because someone else has not achieved the same level of success? How can there be justice when the law applies to some, while the repeated violation of it by others is ignored? How can there be justice when the rights of some are denied because others find the exercise of them to be offensive? There can be no justice when the rights of some are denied because others do not like them, or when the full enjoyment of the fruits of their labors is denied them to forcefully provide for those in need. Charity is fine, but government mandated charity is the antithesis to the freedom that so many claim to cherish.

If there was one quote, or idea that I could permanently implant into every persons mind, it would be the following quote by Ben Franklin, “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” So many today think that they should not be required to expend any effort at all to achieve success or riches; that they are simply entitled to it. The thing is, who is going to provide it for them without denying them the justice of enjoying the success they have; and whether they were born into it or achieved it by hard work is irrelevant. The point is that when people believe they are entitled to something, someone else has to provide it for them; often at great cost to themselves. Now tell, where is the equality in that?

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816, “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

When you force one segment of society to subsidize another, you place those who subsidize into the position of being slaves to those who are given the subsidies. As a nation that prides itself on being the land of the free, how can we tolerate this double standard?

There is another aspect to equality that I don’t think many have given much thought; that being the equality one gives for facts and evidence. More often than not people tend to disregard or criticize any evidence which contradicts their position on an issue; no matter how overwhelming the evidence to the contrary is. Is that really equality when one simply chooses to ignore facts which prove their position wrong? How does the truth get justice when that happens? To put it bluntly, it doesn’t.

Equality, especially as it is made reference to in the Declaration of Independence, is not the same social status or wealth; rather it is the equality of opportunity and the equality of rights. Equality can be a double-edged sword if you truly thing about it. What if you forced everyone to be equal in every aspect? What I mean by that is what if you required everyone to wear the exact same clothing, cut their hair the exact same way, do the same things for entertainment, eat the same food day after day, and drive the same car. Don’t you think life would become boring and bland rather quickly? But then wouldn’t we all truly be equal?

What sets us apart, what makes life interesting is our individuality, our freedom to be ourselves; to express ourselves as we see fit, and to do whatever it is that we find enjoyment from. If you take that away you create a nation of slaves; or at least clones. You know, the military cuts the hair off all recruits and makes them all wear the same uniform for a reason; to break down their individuality and get them to work as part of a group. While that is okay for combat units, in civilian life it destroys individuality and takes away our freedom.

There are other places where people are pretty much equal too; serving time in prison and serving as slaves are two examples. Yet in both those the rights of those serving are severely limited, if not nonexistent. If you truly want equality, why don’t you try your hand at being a slave, or serving time in prison?

It’s funny how people have these double standards when it comes to equality. They want their rights, then because others exercise rights they do not like they call for those rights to be restricted. Everyone wants wealth and success, but when people achieve it they are punished by being required to subsidize the existence of those who have failed to achieve it. Everyone, (or most everyone that is), wants a job, but when they get one they often do not want to do the work that the job entails.

If only people realized how idiotic they sound sometimes; they would crawl off and hide in a cave out of shame.

In my last article I spoke of the American Way that Superman defended. Well the American Way is not to be punished for exercising your rights or achieving success. The American Way is to provide equal opportunity for all to succeed, and then get out of people’s way and let them seek that success.

People today view government as an agent to enforce their view of Social Justice upon society, but it wasn’t always so. In his first Inaugural Address Thomas Jefferson gave us his thoughts on what constituted ‘good’ government, “…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.”

Then almost a century later, Theodore Roosevelt made the following comments, “The worse lesson that can be taught a man is to rely on others and whine over his sufferings. If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.” (Source: How Not To Help Our Poorer Brother, Review of Reviews, 1897)

America will never again achieve the level of greatness that it once had, (no matter how many presidents tell us that the state of the Union continues to be strong) unless we seek equality in one crucial thing; what it is we expect and allow our government to do. As long as each of us has our own beliefs, our own agendas, and we only vote for the candidate who comes closest to meeting our desires, then things will never get better.

While America may still be better than many other countries across the globe, it will never reach its full potential as long as one segment of society believes that another owes it its existence and believes that the rights of others can be restricted simply because they do not like it when people exercise them.

Equality, as our Founders understood it, was the equal enjoyment of our rights and the equal opportunity for success; nothing more, nothing less. What passes for equality today is a joke and it won’t be until people once again stand for equality as our Founders understood it that America can even begin to think about healing and becoming a truly great nation once again.

And I know somebody is going to mention it, so I need to speak on it before they do. Yes our Founders did nothing to provide equality for those who served as slaves in the Colonies when our nation was being founded.

While slavery was a blot upon our nation, there hasn’t been a slave in over a century, so get over it. And for those of you who applaud Abe Lincoln as the Great Emancipator and condemn the South because they were racists, I offer you the following quote taken from Lincoln’s debate with Stephen Douglas, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

You talk about the disingenuousness of our Founders when it comes to equality, well what about your disingenuous view of Lincoln as being for equality for the slaves? Lincoln may, or may not have supported the freeing of them, but he surely wasn’t for their equality as it related to whites.

But then again, that only proves that facts do not matter, that they are less equal to the lies you prefer to believe which support your positions; including those you hold on equality.

“Superman… fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.”
~Adventures of Superman~
(1952-1958)

The Adventures of Superman aired its last episode two months before I was born, but that didn’t prevent me from watching re-runs of the series throughout my youth. I think every boy who grew up in my generation, at one point or another, wished they could be just like Superman.

Superman has been revisited numerous times since George Reeves made his first appearance on network TV as the Man of Steel. He has been portrayed by Christopher Reeves and Henry Cavill on the big screen, Dean Cain portrayed him on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and a few less notable others have revisited the role of Superman. Yet it was the original 1950’s version that always comes to mind when I think of Superman; regardless of the hokey acting and special effects.

Although there were a lot of television shows that gave us snapshots of American life during the 50’s, I think it was Superman who best personified the never ending battle between good and evil; and it is the opening monologue from that show that always comes to mind more than the story told in any of the particular episodes.

You see, Superman didn’t just fight crime, he fought for certain values that were predominant during the era in which the TV show was filmed; truth, justice, and the American Way. The first two, truth and justice, are pretty self-explanatory, but the last, the American Way can be taken to mean any manner of things. I take the American Way to mean certain values or ethics that guided and directed the people of this country in their lives; honesty, integrity, hard work, a respect for the rights of others, and a certain degree of morality.

If you truly were to think about it, everything that Superman stood for has come under attack. The truth has no meaning to people anymore, nor does justice. And the American Way, well that’s gone by the wayside as well with all manner of abhorrent being accepted and tolerated, and any who speak out against it criticized and condemned as politically incorrect.

Oh sure, people talk about the truth all the time but, more often than not, when confronted with it they choose to ignore it, or reject it outright because it conflicts with their existing beliefs. They also talk about justice, but if justice is the upholding of the law, how can they condone supporting a government which routinely violates the law governing its actions? And as for the American Way, well how much laziness do we tolerate and subsidize? How much immorality runs rampant in society today? How often do we seek to restrict the rights of others for the overall public good? If you ask me, the American Way died a long time ago, to be replaced by whatever it is that people choose to believe in today.

I find it strangely coincidental that in the period between the Adventures of Superman going off the air and the supposed suicide of actor George Reeves, we began to see the decaying of the principles which Superman stood for. Wasn’t it during this period that we saw the rise of counter-culture movements such as the hippies; with their free love and communal lifestyles?

Although, for the most part, the hippies have gone the way of the dodo bird, their ideology remains as strong today as it did during their heyday. We see it all the time without even recognizing it for what it is. The concepts of social justice; that society is responsible for providing for all those in need can trace its roots directly back to the hippy movement.

Another thing I find strangely coincidental is that during the time that the Adventures of Superman were playing on TV’s across America, a Russian born American named Ayn Rand published her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. I find it strange that throughout my years in the Public Indoctrination System, (Public Schools) that I read numerous books like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm, but I never was made to read Atlas Shrugged. Possibly it was due to its length; coming in at over a thousand pages. But I think it was more than that; I think that even back then the process of indoctrination was well underway and a book like Atlas Shrugged may have exposed the game plan of those who sought to manipulate and control the minds of our youth.

Didn’t Lenin once say “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted?” I truly believe that it was during my generation that the process of altering the American psyche began, and having kids like me read a book like Atlas Shrugged would be akin to pouring Roundup on the seed that Lenin spoke of.

You may not agree with everything Rand espoused, but you cannot deny that the parallels between what she wrote of in Atlas Shrugged and what is actually occurring in America today are quite striking; (that is if you have read Atlas Shrugged and are mentally capable of making those comparisons).
Before I continue, I want to provide a few select quotes from Atlas Shrugged just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Read them, and then I’ll get back to you.

– Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking

– Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own – they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal – for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them – while you’d give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them.

– I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Now tell me, do those quotes either not conflict with the mindset of many in America today; particularly the more youthful among us, or do they not expose a nerve as they describe your way of thinking in ways which you find uncomfortable?

Getting back to the American Way for a moment; the American Way, as I see it, is I let you live your life as you see fit and you let me live mine as I see fit. You don’t force your views on me and I won’t force my views on you. You don’t ask me to support you and I won’t ask you to support me. You don’t violate my rights and I won’t violate yours.

That, above all else, is justice; and the purpose of government is to provide justice. If you don’t believe me, check the Preamble to the Constitution, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (My emphasis)

The problem is that for these beliefs and ideologies to succeed it requires that justice be denied to some. All these social programs which provide aide to those in need have to be funded somehow; and that funding comes when money is taken from one group to provide to another; or the redistribution of wealth.

And as people cannot lawfully impose their will upon others, then it falls upon government acting as an agent of coercion to compel compliance to whatever society demands of it; and often what government itself chooses to compel society’s obedience to. The moment that happens, the moment government stops providing justice for all, and compels some to sacrifice or surrender something for the benefit of others, we have tyranny. It matters not if what is surrendered comes in the form of a loss of a portion of the fruits of their labors, or if it comes in the form of a loss of liberty; the end result is the same; tyranny.

In America today if a person forces their will upon another it is considered a crime. On the other hand, if that same person get’s government to enact a law which forces their will upon others, then it is business as usual, or the democratic process at work. That is why Jefferson said the law is often but the tyrants will, because it is tyranny when you violate one group’s rights to benefit another, or take from them against their will to provide for the needs of others. No matter what you choose to call it, Social Justice, or the General Welfare, it all boils down to using the coercive force of government to force others to bend to your will; and that my friends is tyranny.

Before I finish I want to leave you with one last quote from Atlas Shrugged. I hope you will read and ponder it; comparing what it says to what you believe. Here is the quote:

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breaches or fraud by the others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against the victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.

My final thoughts are best expressed if you just scroll back up and read the title; where is Superman when America needs him most?

“I’m sorry Janice, while your answer is factually
correct, Joe was offended by it, so he gets the points.”

I remember a time, not so long ago in fact, when liars were scorned to the extent that every word that came out of their mouths was suspect. Even as kids we would hurl the insult ‘liar, liar pants on fire’ at each other, hoping to shame each other into telling the truth. Boy, how things have changed. Today lying is routine; people do it to each other, our elected officials and the media does it to us, and nobody bats an eye about it. In fact, lying has become so common that people rarely even seek out the truth anymore; they simply accept what they hear as truth and then go on about their lives.

What makes matters even worse is that when someone who values the truth comes forward and calls people on their lies they are attacked; either verbally or physically, and the truth is pushed aside as inconsequential; especially if it does not fit the politically corrective narrative beings spoon fed to the masses. I have lost track of the times I’ve been told to tone down my rhetoric because certain people find it offensive. Since when has the truth become offensive? Have we sunk so low as a people that the truth is now offensive? If that truly is the case then I’m ashamed to consider myself part of humanity.

One of the characteristics I use to gauge a person’s integrity is not only how often they tell the truth, but how often they consider the truth when confronted with it. If I meet someone who is unwilling to accept facts and evidence because it contradicts their existing beliefs, then my respect for that person diminishes substantially. The truth should matter; in fact, it should be the driving force behind any and all opinions one forms. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, and I intend to provide a few clear cut examples which confirm that statement.

The first example is directed to those who are calling for new gun control laws in response to the recent shooting in Las Vegas. The narrative goes something like this, if we pass this new piece of legislation it will help prevent something like this from ever happening again. How many times have we heard that one; yet these shootings seem to just keep happening?

How many laws was the suspected shooter, Stephen Paddock, in violation of when he supposedly opened fire into that crowd of concert-goers? Anyone got any ideas? I’d say he was in violation of at least a half dozen laws; and people think that one more would have stopped him? But this doesn’t matter to those pushing for common sense gun laws; all that matters to them is the appearance of caring, of attempting to ‘do something’ to prevent things like this from happening again. The effectiveness of what they do is irrelevant, all that matters is that they care about human life and want to end the senseless violence; which leads me directly into my next point.

When arguing for stricter gun control laws, people always point out the total numbers of people who die in firearm related crimes, yet they fail to break those numbers down as it pertains to how many die due to being shot with either a pistol or a rifle.

According to statistics collected by the FBI, 13,164 people were killed by firearms in the U.S. in 2010; 12,795 in 2011; 12,888 in 2012; 12,253 in 2013 and 11,961 in 2014. Yes those numbers are high and the loss of life is tragic. But whenever we have one of these mass shootings the first clarion call is for stricter laws regarding ‘assault’ rifles.

Yet if we go back to the FBI’s statistics in those same years the number of people killed with rifles drops dramatically; with 2010 being the deadliest year with 367 killed by rifles. On the other hand, during that same period those killed by handguns is never less than 12,000 people per year. Why is the push always for tougher laws regarding what the gun grabbers like to call ‘assault rifles’ when they make up such a small percentage of the total loss of life due to firearm violence?

There is absolutely no way to get a clear cut idea of how many guns are held in private hands in the U.S. but estimates put the number between 270-310 million guns in circulation in the United States. If guns are so deadly, as these people wanting to ban them claim, why are the instances of these mass shootings so infrequent? If the availability of guns really is the cause of these mass shootings, then why don’t we see more of these mass shootings?

Yet you are going to tell me that we should pass a law which punishes all those law abiding gun owners because one or two nutcases goes on a shooting spree? I think the real reason people push for gun control laws as a means to prevent these things is because they do not have the courage to look into a mirror and find the real reason people go on these spree shootings. If people were to look closely at what motivates these people it would cause them to question their morals and what they believe to be acceptable behavior. So instead of going after what causes people to commit crimes like this, they go after the tool these criminals use in the commission of their crimes. Makes perfect sense to me; so why don’t we start banning cars every time some drunk driver kills entire families in an accident?

These people who are crying the loudest for new gun control measures are often the same people who cry the loudest whenever there is talk of criminalizing abortion. I guess it is okay that they condone the killing of unborn babies, but once that child exits the womb it becomes crime to take its life. Did you know that according to the Centers for Disease Control, (CDC) monitors how many abortions are performed per year in the U.S.? According to their statistics, in 2013, the same year there were 11,961 gun related deaths, there were 664,435 abortions performed in the U.S.? Did you know that? That’s 55 aborted babies for every person killed with a firearm.

If one truly cared about the tragic loss of life, one would think that there would be some serious discussion going on about closing down abortion clinics. But oh no, you can’t talk about that; it violates a woman’s right to choose. Well, I don’t see anything in the Bill of Rights about that, but I do see something in there which says that our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. But as the title of this declares, the truth doesn’t matter anymore.

The next area of discussion will focus on what people believe are the powers given their government. As we all know, at least I hope we all know, we have a constitution which establishes our government. Unfortunately, it appears that what it says has been relegated to the status of a historical document fit only for public display; and is no longer viewed as a legally binding contract which limits the powers our government shall exercise.

The fact that so many people in this country vote for their choice for president based upon the promises they make on the campaign trail leaves no doubt in my mind that the Constitution means little to the average voter. If it did, the people would realize that the president has absolutely no authority to fulfill the promises they make to the voters. That power lies with Congress; and only when it is in accordance with the specific powers listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

I don’t know how many times I must present this quote for it to sink in, but when James Madison was writing under the pseudonym of Publius, he specifically told the people of New York, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” If they are few, and if they are defined, why do we continue to allow our government to exceed them?

If we really wanted the things we use as the basis for choosing a president, why don’t we vote for candidates on the home front who will provide these things for us? After all, that is the purpose of the State governments; to provide for the overall needs of the people which make up these states united.

Madison goes on to explain the difference between State and federal authority as follows:

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.

The Constitution is a law; which is a fact that has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court, “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.” (Source: Ex parte Milligan, 1866)

If the Constitution is a law, why do we not treat it as such and demand that those we elect adhere to its restrictions upon their powers? Why do we tolerate the passing of laws which go beyond the sphere of authority given them? Why do we tolerate laws which violate our most sacred rights? Why do we tolerate endless wars against nations that have never directly attacked the United States? After all, what good is a law if nobody obeys it?

This partisan bickering sickens me beyond description. When one party gets into power the other party decries their abuses of power and supports Congress when it obstructs its policies. Then when their party gets into power they ignore its abuses of power and condemn Congress for obstructing their agenda. At no point in time does the legality of what government is doing come into play; it is pure my party over your party bullshit; and it is exactly what they want; as long as the law which governs their actions is ignored, they are happy to let us argue amongst ourselves over party, while they grow bigger and stronger. It’s the old divide and conquer tactic being played out, and we are all willing participants in it because we refuse to accept the truth; that our government as an entity is corrupt, criminal.

But like I said, the truth doesn’t matter. And finally we come to the subject which is near and dear to my heart; the complete misunderstanding of what the Confederate Battle Flag stands for, and what the Civil War was truly fought over.

If you are like most, you have been taught that the Civil War was a war fought over the issue of slavery; therefore any and all images representing the Confederacy are viewed from the perspective of those evil Southern slave owners. Unfortunately, that is not the truth; that is not why the war was fought.

Sure, slavery may have been an issue which led the Southern States to secede, but it was only one of many; the major one being the unjust tariffs that the government was levying against the South. I know you’re not going to believe me, and you are probably less likely to go out and research it for yourself; nonetheless if you had gone out and did a bit of research on the Nullification Crisis you would have seen that the issue of oppressive tariffs had been brewing for 3 decades prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.

If slavery was the ONLY reason why the Civil War was fought why did the South not just ratify the Corwin Amendment which would have made slavery a permanent institution in the United States; it had already been approved by both houses of Congress, so all they had to do is ratify it, keep their slaves, and the Union would have remained intact. That is, if slavery was the ONLY reason for the Civil War.

The South did not want a war, they did not wish to conquer any Northern lands; they only sought to separate from the Union in peace. Everything they sought is the same as our Founders sought when they affixed their names to the Declaration of Independence, a nation they could call their own with a system of government designed by them to best serve their interests. If you had taken the time to read the Constitution for the Confederate States of America you would have seen that is was very similar to the Constitution of the Union, with only slight modifications made on the taxing and spending powers.

Hell, Jefferson Davis told his people that all they sought was peace with their neighbors to the North in an address he delivered on April 29, 1861, “We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms.”

Abraham Lincoln is the one who called for the raising of an army of 75,000 to suppress the rebellion in the South. The only rebellion going on was the peaceful rebellion against the authority of the central government. Fort Sumter is used as justification that the South fired first, but they would not have fired had Lincoln not sent troops to South Carolina to resupply it. As South Carolina had already issued a declaration of secession it was no longer technically a part of the Union, therefore the Union had no authority to man, or supply a fort on their sovereign soil. Lincoln’s actions were a direct threat to their sovereignty, and an act of war. He started the war, not the South.

In fact, Virginia chose only to secede after Lincoln’s Secretary of War sent Governor John Letcher a cable demanding that Virginia provide troops to quell the rebellion in the Southern States. Virginia chose secession over invading another State to impose the federal authority upon them; and they suffered mightily for their choice.

Heck, Lincoln himself said his war was not to free the slaver, or interfere with the institution of slavery. He said so in his Inaugural Address and he said it even more clearly in a letter to Horace Greeley, “As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.”

Lincoln’s real reason for his war, and for keeping the Union together for that matter, was simply the fact that the government, of which he was the head of, would not survive without the taxes being imposed upon the South. Lincoln needed the revenue from those tariffs, otherwise he would be forced to impose tariffs upon the people who supported him and got him elected; the industrial interests of the North.

Lincoln said as much in a proclamation he issued against the Confederacy in 1861, “Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed therein.”

If you’ll note, he says the insurrection is against the government; and in this he is partially true; the South was challenging the authority of the federal government, but up until Lincoln forced their hand by attempting to resupply Fort Sumter they had done so peacefully. But then he goes on to lay out his real reasons for his war of aggression, the inability of his government to effectively collect the revenue it felt the Southern States owed the federal government.

This was his policy and his entire reason for his war, and he repeated it in a message to Congress, also in 1861, “My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861).”

No mention is made as it pertains to the issue of freeing a single slave; that only came later, in his Emancipation Proclamation. And if you’ll recall Lincoln’s letter to Greeley, he said whatever he did in regards to slavery was ONLY to further the cause of keeping the Union intact.

You can believe what you want, but had the Founding Fathers been alive during the Civil War, I am almost certain that most of them would have sided with the Confederacy. Hell, Jefferson himself said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” (Source: Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address)

The Civil War was a war to establish the federal government as sovereign and supreme in this country; depriving the people and the States of the means of resisting unjust and unconstitutional laws through secession; and things have never been the same since. Yet all people are taught is that the war was about slavery. Well Woodrow Wilson, prior to becoming president, wrote that “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.” (Source: A History of the American People, Pg 231)

Well, they were successful as that is how the war is now viewed by most people in this country; a war fought to end the evil institution of slavery. But the facts don’t lie; even when the majority of the people ignore them.

We have all grown up in a country where no one has seen truly constitutional government in action. We are accustomed to government doing all these things it was never intended it be allowed to do; yet a careful examination of the facts would clearly prove this to be the case. But most people are too lazy, too apathetic, and too complacent to make the effort to seek out the truth. Therefore we tolerate corruption and, dare I say, evil in our government because that is all we’ve known.

If our government was established to secure and safeguard our liberty then if it then turns around and enacts laws that restrict that liberty, how can one support it and not at the same time be supporting evil incarnate? If your hearts and minds were just, you could not, in clear conscience, support a government that did not serve the purposes for which it was established; and this goes for both conservatives and liberals. If you loved truth, if you loved liberty, you would HATE your government. There are no if ands or buts about it. You can’t love one thing, then support something which seeks to obfuscate and destroy all you love.

That is why the truth cannot be tolerated in today’s modern society. It is why the politically correct among you condemn anyone who speaks it; it is because were the truth to take hold you would lose all your power over us; your lies would be exposed and no one would fall for them anymore. As the saying goes, ‘The truth shall set you free’; you just have to care enough to go out and find it and be willing to accept whatever it is it tells you.

Sometimes when I hear people talk I have to ask myself what kind of convoluted logic they used to arrive at the opinions they so proudly proclaim; it sometimes seems as if common sense and a close examination of facts and evidence do not enter into the process of forming their opinions and beliefs. A perfect example of this is how many Californians were calling for California to secede from the Union after the election of Donald Trump, but now that their State is being ravaged by wild fires these same people are begging the federal government to come to their aid with federal assistance.

I mean, c’mon people; you were ready to tell the United States government to go to hell, but the minute you run into trouble you come crying back to that same government and beg that they open the spigot of federal funds help you in your time of need. Isn’t that just a tad bit hypocritical; or am I simply asking too much of people to have a little intellectual integrity?

Another example, and one which I wish to devote a bit more time to, is why do American’s celebrate Independence Day yet cringe whenever someone even hints at standing up to the almighty federal government and the oppressive laws it passes?

What exactly do people think they are celebrating when they get off work on July 4th; the day our Founders held a barbecue and sat around drinking beer? For cryin’ out loud we celebrate the day they declared their independence from a tyrant and backed that up by taking up arms against those who imposed the tyrants will upon them. So why is it that whenever anyone suggests we take a stand against our government today they are called unpatriotic?

I think the best definition for patriotism that I’ve ever heard comes from Samuel L. Clemens, aka Mark Twain, who said, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” I don’t know how you feel, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that my government deserves my support.

And it’s not just government that I have problems supporting, it is those who enforce the unconstitutional laws government passes upon the people of this country. I draw no distinction between an agent of the BATF who enforces the laws passed by our government and a Sheriff’s deputy who does the same; in my eye they are both the same; agents who impose tyranny upon the people whose rights they are sworn to protect.

The other day I got a call from someone working for the Fraternal Order of Law Enforcement asking that I contribute to their organization to support the families of officers killed in the line of duty. On the surface it sounds like a good cause; one which people should be willing to contribute to. But upon closer examination of the word ‘duty’ one has to ask; what exactly is it that they consider duty? Is it simply following orders; is it enforcing whatever laws our government passes; or is it standing up for our rights and refusing to enforce unconstitutional laws?

Our Founding Fathers warned us of the dangers posed by a standing army; how they were a threat to the public liberty. Well a standing army can come in many shapes and sizes. It could be an overgrown military which could be called upon to enforce the governments will upon the people; as is the case in many dictatorships. Then again it could come in the form of bloated bureaucracies such as the BATF or DEA that use whatever force they deem necessary to impose the governments will. Then again it could come as local law enforcement who are ‘simply doing their job’ which just happens to include using military style weaponry and military tactics to enforce any and all laws our government decides that we must obey.

To me there is absolutely no difference between the 3 examples I have just provided; in my mind’s eye they are all agents that enforce a tyrant’s will; and they expect me to contribute my money to support them? I told the guy I would consider contributing if and when law enforcement began supporting and defending my rights. There was a rather lengthy pause and then the guy hung up. I’m sure my name went onto some list to be forwarded on to some governmental agency to be kept under surveillance.

But hey, the price of liberty is that one be ready and willing to resist invasions of it from all fronts; and be ready to defend it should the need arise. Our Founders were willing to do the same, and if we wish to consider ourselves as true patriots we owe it to them to do nothing less in our lives.

In 1785 James Madison wrote the following words, “It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon 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 freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”

Madison did not say that people should wait until the experiments upon our liberty became unbearable, he said we should not allow these experiments upon our liberty become mired down with precedents; we should resist them the moment they occur. Have we done so? I think not! In fact, not only do we not resist them, some actually call out for more violations of our liberty because they believe that safety and security are more important than their rights. Well Ben Franklin had something to say to people who believe that, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The infringement upon our most sacred rights has become so commonplace, so routine, that those who speak out against these violations are viewed as threats to society and the public order. I honestly wonder, with the mindset many have today, how they would react had they lived in and around Boston in the period immediately preceding the American Revolution? How would they have responded to the Boston Tea Party; the hanging in effigy of Andrew Oliver; or the ransacking and looting the home of Governor Thomas Hutchinson? Yet all these things are part and parcel of what American’s claim to celebrate on July 4, America’s Independence Day.

In a letter to Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “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.” Does that quote sound anything like the people of America today who willingly submit to all manner of laws which threaten their liberty? Does that sound anything like the people of today who condemn and criticize those of us who even hint that we should resist unconstitutional authority? Again, I think not.

I get the impression that many believe our government to be omnipotent and its power and authority to be without limits. Yes, its power is supreme, but ONLY when it is exercised in accordance with the specific powers given it by the Constitution. Anything it does which exceeds those specific powers if tyranny; plain and simple. And, since when has it become unpatriotic to stand up against tyrants if I might be so bold to ask?

People today want so much from their government that they are willing to forgive and forget the violations upon their rights our government is guilty of committing on a daily basis. Not only do the people forgive government for doing these things, they openly criticize and condemn those who bring these violations to their attention. Just look at how we treated Edward Snowden when he told us the extent to which our government is spying upon us. Instead of becoming outraged over the violations of our privacy, we became angered at the messenger; calling him treasonous.

Yet there is a quote which has been attributed to everyone from Thomas Jefferson to radio announcer Paul Harvey, “A government which is big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” Whoever actually said that is irrelevant, it is the thought expressed by those words that ought to strike fear into the hearts of all those who truly value their liberty.

Although he was not an American, Frederic Bastiat wrote something that people really ought to give some thought to. In his book The Law, Bastiat states:

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

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

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

If the purpose of the law is to protect our liberty, then when the law restricts our liberty it becomes unjust; or tyrannical. There is no getting around that. And if it is also within our rights as sovereign and independent citizens to resist infringements upon our liberty, why is it that so many refuse to do so, even turning around to condemn those of us who speak openly about the violations we see our government of committing on a routine basis?

During that period which led to the Colonies seeking independence from the Crown there was a great deal of trepidation among some over what standing up against the might of the British Army would mean for them. They questioned whether it was better to suffer as loyal subjects of the Crown rather than stand up for their rights. Many refused to see the threat the unlimited power of a King posed to their liberty; (much like the people of America today refuse to see the danger posed by their current government). Yet Patrick Henry stood alone as that clarion call for liberty and in March of 1775 he uttered the now famous words, “Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

I find it absolutely laughable that so many so-called patriots stand behind our military when our government sends it all over the world to secure freedom for the people of the world, when we don’t even have real freedom here at home.

Freedom is not safety, it is not security, and it is not comfort; it is the ability to live our lives as we choose; make our own choices and decisions, and accept complete and total responsibility for those choices and decisions. Freedom is dangerous; it places the burden of our safety and survival squarely upon the shoulders of those who seek it; not the shoulders of society nor its system of government.

As Thomas Jefferson used to say, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” I don’t know what you want, but all I want is for my government to leave me alone; I want it off my back and out of my wallet. And while I’m at it, I also want people to stop telling me how I must live my life; telling me that I cannot say this or that, that I cannot display certain images or say certain things because others find them offensive. You know what I have to say about that? TOUGH SHIT! I find things such as ignorance, apathy, complacency and laziness highly offensive; and I find them in great abundance as well; but what I find offensive doesn’t fit the politically correct narrative, so my feelings don’t matter. Well screw that, I’m going to continue to be as offensive and politically incorrect as I want, and if you don’t like what I have to say, I have but one thing to tell you, STOP LISTENING! But don’t for a moment tell me that I must remain silent while I see the country I love circling the drain.

If slavery and servitude is what you truly want, fine; just don’t seek to force it upon me as well. Our Founders were not men who preferred the comfort of slavery over the tumult associated with defending their liberty; they preferred to fight for what they believed were their God-given rights. If you choose not to, that’s perfectly fine, but don’t for a moment consider yourself to be of the same character and the same patriotism of those men who chose to defend their liberty rather than bend over and let their government stick it to them for the promise of a little comfort and security.

As Samuel Adams so perfectly said, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Wee 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.”

As I have previously stated, the Federalist Papers are a series of articles written by 3 men; Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, for the sole purpose of convincing the people of New York to support the ratification of the Constitution. As such one should read them with the understanding that the authors might very well be telling the truth, but they may also be embellishing the virtues of the Constitution while avoiding any serious discussion of its defects.

You see, the authors of the Federalist Papers would not have had to sit down and write 85 articles supporting the Constitution had there not been sufficient opposition to it in the first place to warrant the time and effort it took to write them. I can’t speak for anyone else, but to me it only seems logical that if I want to truly know the intent of those who drafted this document which outlines our system of government, that I would read the arguments both supporting and opposing it.

Unfortunately, in a country where most people won’t even take the time to read the Constitution itself, I find it highly unlikely that they are going to sit down and read all 85 Federalist Papers, the writings of Brutus, Cato, the Federal Farmer, and men like Patrick Henry who all fervently opposed the ratification of our Constitution. As stated, there were 85 Federalist Papers, then add to those the writings of the Anti-Federalists and you have the expenditure of a serious amount of time and critical thinking in front of you; and most simply won’t take the time or make the effort required to fully understand both sides of the argument which embroiled our nation for almost 2 years.

Luckily for you there are some of us out here in the land of internet bloggers that have read all those arguments both for and against the Constitution; and we have no problem with sitting down and trying to explain what we have found. All it takes for our message to get through is a willing ear and an open mind. Unfortunately, we often find neither, and on the rare instance we do, the feeling we experience is akin to a prospector finding a gold nugget the size of a grapefruit.

Yet the lack of fertile soil for our message is no deterrent to us, as the pursuit and sharing of the truth is our only concern; it is the motivation which drives us, and the knowledge that we have accumulated in that pursuit is the only reward we need. You can wallow in ignorance for all we care; we have found the truth and whether or not you accept it is actually of little concern to us.

This does not mean I do not become angered when I hear some of the idiotic comments people make, or their refusal to provide facts of their own to support their sundry ‘enlightened’ positions on the issues this country faces. How would anyone feel when they knew they were in possession of the facts and nobody would give those facts any consideration; let alone provide any facts of their own to support their position? I think that would anger even the most patient of men.

All that being said, there is one point I would like to focus my remaining time on; the very nature of our Constitution. Recently I got into a pretty heated discussion/argument on Facebook with an individual who repeatedly told me that my views are old fashioned and antiquated; that not only are my views no longer relevant in today’s modern world, neither is our Constitution. Playing the devil’s advocate I said, “Okay, let’s assume the Constitution is no longer relevant; let’s abolish it. BUT, if you abolish the Constitution you also abolish the government it established; for without the Constitution our government has absolutely no authority to impose any law upon the people or the States.”

This person could not argue with my position, so he resorted by saying that I was taking things to extreme measures; that we should have a government, just not one that is required to obey the limits the Constitution imposes upon it.

God, I wish I had a magic mirror that I could hold up to people that would reveal to them how idiotic they sound sometimes; I would have held it up to that person and screamed, “LOOK AT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING!!!”

People treat the Constitution almost as if it is a precious work of art to be viewed and admired, but not a legally binding document upon the government it establishes and the voters who put people into the positions of power it created. That, my friends, is a serious mistake; as it leaves our government itself, or the ever changing will of the mob as the only things which define and limit the powers our government may exercise.

Article 6, Clause 2 of the Constitution declares that it, and all laws passed in pursuance of it, shall be the supreme law of the land. Immediately following the end of the Civil War the United States Supreme Court heard the case of Ex parte Milligan wherein they held, “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.” (Justice David Davis providing the opinion of the Court)

Our Constitution not only establishes the form our system of government shall take, it also clearly explains the powers given each branch and the limitations imposed upon the government it establishes. Without the Constitution we would have no lawful government, and when the government does not obey the law which created it, then our government itself becomes unlawful; and any liberty loving individual SHOULD resist it to the best of their abilities.

Whenever someone mentions the law the first, (and possibly the only thing) which passes through most people’s minds is the laws our government enacts which we are required to obey. People never stop to give any thought to the fact that our Constitution is also a law which binds our government to certain specific powers; and that by violating those limitations upon their power our government essentially becomes a gang of elected criminals.

Back when the Constitution was still but a proposition awaiting approval or rejection by the people, Alexander Hamilton sat down to write Federalist 15. In the text of his message to the people of New York Hamilton explained, “Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation. This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of the courts and ministers of justice, or by military force; by the COERCION of the magistracy, or by the COERCION of arms.”

While Hamilton was primarily bemoaning the fact that under the Articles of Confederation the Congress lacked the authority to enforce the laws it passed upon the States, the facts provided by Hamilton apply equally to any and all laws; including the Constitution.

If I may be so bold to ask, where is our power and authority to penalize those we elect when they violate the Constitution? I’m not talking about simply voting them out of office, I’m talking about actual penalties; jail time and fines for their crime of violating their oaths of office to support and defend the Constitution? Where is it? Can anyone tell me?

The government certainly has the means and will to enforce the laws they pass which affect us. Look at all the agencies the government has established to enforce the laws it passes; the FBI, the DEA, the DHS, the BATF, the BLM, and the list goes on and on and on. Each of these alphabet soup agencies has the power to use deadly force to impose the laws passed our government. Yet just look at how people would respond if I suggested that a group of armed citizens marched into our nation’s capital and arrest every member of Congress and the President; they would say that I have lost my mind; that I’m a danger to the public safety.

So again, I ask you, where is our power to enforce the law we enacted to restrain the actions of our government? I’ll tell you where it is, it is out there with the Leprechauns, Fairies and Trolls; it is a fiction of your imagination; we have no authority other than, as Hamilton said, the coercion of the magistracy or the coercion of arms.

The courts won’t help us as they are part of the problem as they routinely disregard the Constitution; or seek to interpret it to fit their twisted agendas and beliefs. Besides, I defy you to find a local judge who would hear the case, or a prosecutor that would issue an arrest warrant for the president or any member of Congress based upon the fact that they have violated their oath of office to defend the Constitution. You’ll find that judge in the same place you find the Leprechauns and fairies; in your imagination.

That’s why I constantly say that a thorough understanding of the arguments, both those supporting and opposing the ratification of the Constitution are vital if one is to understand just how corrupt and criminal our government has become. Take for instance something Patrick Henry tried to warn his fellow Virginia delegates about, “Where is the responsibility — that leading principle in the British government? In that government a punishment, certain and inevitable, is provided: But in this, there is no real actual punishment for the grossest maladministration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities. That paper may tell me they will be punished. I ask, by what law? They must make the law — for there is no existing law to do it. What — will they make a law to punish themselves? This, Sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true responsibility — and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves.”

When our government is not accountable to anyone, when it can pass whatever laws it wants with impunity, or at least their only fear being voted out of office, it opens the door for all manner of mischief and, most likely, tyranny. I tell people not to look in the future for tyranny in the US of A; it’s already here. The problem is that most people look at government through their rose colored glasses of political party loyalty; not the unfiltered view of the Constitutional legality of its actions.

James Madison told us what tyranny would look like when it came, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
Thomas Jefferson also warned, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

Tyranny is here folks, it is alive and well, and thriving I might add, right here in the US of A; and the people cannot see it because the limits imposed upon our government by the law which created it is viewed as being old fashioned, out of date, and irrelevant.

Well I see it, as do quite a few other people I know; and we see a storm coming when the day will come when we are called upon to take a stand before what remains of the liberty our government was established to protect is taken from us. That is why, no matter what your justifications are, we will fight each further attempt to restrict our right to keep and bear arms.

Not only that, but some of us have made the decision that if such laws are passed we will not obey them. After all, if our government can get away with disobeying the law, why shouldn’t we be allowed to? Doesn’t the old saying state, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander?”

I’m all for obeying the law; but only when the law itself was passed lawfully. When our government begins passing laws which violate the law governing their actions, well, that’s a whole new ballgame, and whatever rulebook they play by applies to us as well. So if they want us to obey the laws they pass, they better start obeying the law we passed which applies to them.

Americans will tell you that they have a deep abiding love for justice, for law and order, so why is it that they refuse to accept that most of the people they elect to office are guilty of violating the law? Why is it that so many people in this country stand ready to condemn injustice in other countries, but close their eyes to it in their own?

I remember when Saddam Hussein was captured and then hung, and when Gaddafi was deposed, beaten, sodomized, and then shot; the reaction of some in this country almost bordered on orgasmic. Yet were someone to even hint that any member of our government be hung, let alone beaten, sodomized and then shot, the outrage would be instantaneous and cause for condemnation; and this is doubly true where that to apply to a sitting president.

While I’m certainly not suggesting we form up a few lynch mobs and begin dragging elected officials out of office to be hung, I am wondering why people refuse to see that most elected representatives are guilty of violating the law.

I’ve already given plenty of examples of why I no longer support or trust our federal government to uphold the law, so I’m going to focus my attention at the local level by asking, “Why isn’t Governor Jerry Brown in prison?” Before I can even hope to explain why I believe this man should NOT be serving as the Governor of California; rather he should be serving TIME IN PRISON, I must first go back to the very beginning when America gained its independence from Great Britain. Only by understanding what America became at that moment in time can we hope to understand what it has become today.

On October 19, 1781 General Charles Cornwallis sent an aid to surrender his sword to the Americans at Yorktown, signifying the end of the American Revolution and the defeat of the British. However, it was not until September 3, 1783 that the war officially ended when delegates for both sides signed the Treaty of Paris which laid out the terms for the end of the war.

While the Declaration of Independence laid out certain fundamental principles and the justification for America seeking its independence from the Crown, it was the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that became the first international document which explained America’s new status as a nation. It therefore, seems prudent to know how the world viewed the former English Colonies.

Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris states, “His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such, and for himself his Heirs & Successors…”

Now maybe I’m splitting hairs, or maybe I’m just a dunce, but why would the Treaty be written in such a way to list each individual State when it already says United States? Why would the King recognize each state as free and independent when they were in fact separate in name only as some claim; part of a large consolidation of States into a single solitary UNION?

The truth is, whether you choose to accept it or not, that the States were, in fact, solitary sovereign entities free to conduct business as independent nations. Therefore, the word UNITED in United States of America was used as an adjective to describe the States as united for certain things such as the common defense, but otherwise free to conduct business as independent nations; such as regulate their own commerce, establish treaties, and establish whatever laws they felt best served the people living within each individual State.

Our first form of government backs this claim up. Prior to the drafting and adoption of our Constitution, the Colonies had ratified the Articles of Confederation; establishing a centralized government that would manage the affairs of the Colonies as a whole, yet leaving them free and independent from each other. A confederation is nothing more than a loose alliance of smaller independent parties into a larger group which provides certain things that are more easily obtainable in a group than they would be as single entities. Yet under no circumstances did the States relinquish any of their sovereign authority other than what was specifically delegated to the Congress created by the Articles of Confederation.

Think of a confederation as a group of individuals who come to an unoccupied tract of land and seek to establish a place of residence for themselves. If they were to remain single individuals, or families, it would take much longer for them to erect houses and their safety and security would be much less sure as individuals than if they worked with each other to provide these things for all. In no instance would anyone lose their own identity or their individuality, they would just have joined together to obtain things which weren’t easily obtainable as individual units.

By forming a confederation, the States in no way lost their individuality, nor their sovereignty. A few years after our Constitution went into effect the newly established Supreme Court would weigh in on the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, stating, “…at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, 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.”

Sovereignty is the ultimate, or supreme, political authority in a nation or State. In America that power resides not in the government, but in the people. We don’t need a Supreme Court ruling to tell us that; we have the Declaration of Independence where it states, “…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

If, therefore, each State was sovereign and independent, and if all political power resides in the people, then shouldn’t it have been enough that each State had established a government to manage the affairs of each individual State? I mean, why the need for a central government if the States already had governments of their own?

In a way, the answer boils down to the same reason why they had formed into a confederation; for the purpose of obtaining things that were not as easily obtainable as independent States; such as their own defense from attack. The thing was, there were those who said the Articles of Confederation were weak and ineffective in providing the things they were written to provide; and that a much stronger form of government was needed to ensure that it served the purposes for which it was established.

Whether that was just subterfuge designed to hide the fact that men like Madison and Hamilton only sought to create a strong central government which could, over time, weaken or destroy the sovereignty of the States is irrelevant at this point; what’s done is done and the fact is we do have a central government to deal with.

What I’m more concerned with is the relationship between the central government established by the Constitution and the States themselves as independent entities. Did the Constitution do away with the sovereignty and individuality of the States and place them into a consolidation, or did it leave them as single entities with their own spheres of power and authority? Did the Constitution erect a wall between State and Federal power, or did it leave the States open to incursions upon their power by the government it established?

I could go into a very lengthy discussion of the arguments provided against ratification of the Constitution, but I won’t. Let it be sufficient to state that there were a great many who felt that the government established by this constitution under discussion posed a serious threat to the sovereignty of the individual States. If you are interested I suggest you research the writings of those known as the Anti-Federalists who wrote under the pseudonyms of Brutus, Cato, Centinel and the Federal Farmer. All I have to go on is what the Constitution actually says, and what those who supported its ratification said it would, and would not do.

Some people are of the mistaken belief that just because we have a central government that whatever laws it passes supersede or take precedence over the laws passed by the States. That simply is not so. True, the laws passed in support of the powers given our government by the Constitution are to be supreme, but ONLY when the laws our government passes are in pursuance of the specific powers given it.

The best way to explain what I want to say is if you stop looking at the States as these huge tracts of land with millions of people living in them, and start looking at them as if they were individuals. The government created by the Constitution was given certain powers which would enable it to enact laws pertaining to how the States interacted with each other, and which also provided for the common defense of them all; nothing more! The remaining power to pass laws which directly affected the lives of the citizens within each State was retained by the State Legislatures themselves.

If one were to go to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution where the powers granted to our government are listed, one would find that most, if not all of them, give government power only in cases where it affects the interaction, or benefit of the States themselves. Nowhere among the powers listed in the Constitution is the power to enact laws which directly benefitted the people as a whole, or certain specific groups or categories.

During the period of debate which took place between the drafting of the Constitution and its enactment, a series of articles, published under the pseudonym of Publius were printed in the newspapers of New York in support of this constitution. These articles became what we now call the Federalist Papers. When reading these Federalist Papers one must take them for what they are; propaganda pieces designed to assuage any concerns the people of New York had over the threat this constitution posed to the authority of the States or to the liberty of the people. Nonetheless, the 3 authors of these Federalist Papers, (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay) make certain claims that we must assume are somewhat factual.

Therefore, if we are to go to the Federalist Papers and look to see how they explained this balance between State and Federal authority, we would read that Madison declares, “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.” (Source: Federalist 45)

One of the primary arguments used to justify the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention writing an entirely new Constitution was the fact that the States, acting as sovereign entities, could not effectively regulate trade because each state was passing laws of their own which interfered with the free flow of goods between them. Other things were also affected by the fact that each State had laws of their own which were not common to the entire confederation; such as the difference between currencies used by the various States and the requirements each State imposed upon those wishing to become citizens of each State. It was felt that it better the federal government have these powers so that they could be uniform throughout the States.

In those specific instances federal authority is supreme, but in all others the authority is retained by the States. This should not even require explanation, as the 10th Amendment to the Constitution seems to make that pretty clear, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now that we’ve gotten that all taken care of, I wish to bring attention to the fact that there are certain things which the Constitution restricts the States from doing. These restrictions are found in Article 1, Section 10, and they are listed as follows:

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

3: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Now that I’ve explained what powers were to be held by the States and which were to be held by the federal government, (I dare not say now that you understand them, because I can’t be certain that you do), let me move on to explain why I believe the Governor of my State should be in prison.

One of the powers which is among those given our federal government is the power to enact a uniform rule of naturalization; or in other words, to pass immigration and naturalization laws that are common throughout the States. As this is among the powers given the federal government, all laws it enacts in that authority are supreme; meaning the States must adhere to them.

Our immigration laws are found in Title 8 of the United States Code and they clearly state what is allowed and what is prohibited. One of the things which is considered a crime is the sheltering, or aiding of those in this country illegally.

8 U.S. Code § 1324 subsection (a) states the criminal penalties for bringing in and harboring aliens. The law, as written, states:

Any person who–

(II)
aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B)

The penalty for violating these laws may include fines and imprisonment for up to 5 years, or both. They certainly are not that one committing these crimes be allowed to continue serving as the Governor of one of the 50 States!

Jerry Brown, as well as most of the Mayors of the major cities in California, has stated that he will not cooperate with federal authorities in the locating and deporting of those in this country illegally, effectively turning California into a sanctuary for those in this country illegally. Sorry folks, but that is a crime; regardless of what your sentiments are regarding who should be allowed to enter into this country.

I do not want to make this out as if I were singling out any specific country, but why should those who share a common border with the U.S. be given special treatment and offered sanctuary in states like California when other countries are not fortunate enough to share a common border with us so that they can enter this country illegally? Why don’t we just do away with customs and let anyone, in any country, board a plane and come to the U.S. without restrictions of any kind if that is how you feel?

We have these laws for a reason, and that is so we can control who we allow into this country, and how many people we allow into the U.S. on an annual basis. Those who refuse to enforce immigration law, or hinder the enforcement of them by agents of the immigration and naturalization service, or ICE, are in effect, breaking the law themselves and should be punished accordingly; not serving as governors and mayors across the State.

If that weren’t enough to convince you that Governor Brown does not understand, or at least care about the powers given him and those which are retained by the federal government, there is also this. When Donald Trump announced that he was backing out of, or would not attend climate change talks with China, Governor Brown jumped at the opportunity and said that he would be, “participating in a global climate summit and meeting with high-level Chinese officials, possibly including President Xi Jinping.”

If you’ll recall, the very first thing the Constitution restricts States from doing is entering into alliances or treaties with others. Does Governor Brown believe he is special, that those restrictions upon his authority do not apply? Does he think he can go to another country and hammer out some kind of climate change agreement between California and China and have it be lawful to the people of California?

The power to enter into any kind of treaty, including climate change treaties, is restricted to the federal government; specifically the office of the president; with the confirmation of the Senate. This was done because, at the time that restriction was put into place the Senate was the voice of the States in our government and any treaty which affected the States would have to be accepted by those who represented the States; the Senate. Although that protection against violation of State sovereignty no longer exists, (as Senators are now elected by a popular vote of the people) the power to enact treaties still remains solely with the Executive…not some pissant State governor who thinks he’s king of his domain.

I’m all for our federal government limiting its acts to those specifically enumerated within the Constitution. At the same time, I cannot for the life of me understand why Governors such as Jerry Brown have not been brought up on charges of violating federal law, obstruction of justice, and for generally being walking talking colostomy bags who only seek to push a socialist, globalist agenda. If there were any real justice, people like Jerry Brown would meet the same fate Saddam Hussein did, the end of a 12 foot length of rope.

Typically after a mass shooting, such as the one the recently took place in Las Vegas, there is a period of anger and mourning over the tragic loss of life. Then the talk inevitably turns to what we could have done to prevent it from happening and what can we do to prevent something like it from happening in the future. It is during this stage that the talk always turns to passing stricter common-sense gun control measures.

I wonder, for all those who are calling for stricter gun control laws, are you aware of how many laws this supposed shooter was in violation of already? Was it one, two, three…a half dozen? Can anyone answer that for me? Yet you think just one more would have done the trick and prevented this tragedy; that is if Stephen Paddock was actually the one behind the trigger; which I have reason to doubt is the case. But I won’t go into that now, as conspiracy theories are not the reason I am sitting here writing this.

I am sitting here because once again I am hearing the battle cry for tougher, stricter, more common sense gun control measures to be passed, and it is, quite honestly, pushing my levels of tolerance for the people calling for such measures. The memories of some of these people must be very short indeed, as the things they are saying now are the exact same justification that was used the last time they called for tougher gun control laws; and they will be the same reasons given the next time another shooting takes place, and the time after that, and the time after that as well; until the ultimate goal is revealed; the total disarmament of private citizens.

People laugh at me when I say that, they tell me I’m being paranoid for no good reason. Is that so? In a 1993 editorial published in the Los Angeles Times, we read, “Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership? Because it’s the only alternative to the present insanity. Without both strict limits on access to new weapons and aggressive efforts to reduce the supply of existing weapons, no one can be safer. … [W]ho can still argue compellingly that Americans can be trusted to handle guns safely? We think the time has come for America to tell the truth about guns. They are not for us. We cannot handle them.”

Over 40 years ago the following was printed in an editorial found in the New York Times, “The only way to discourage the gun culture is to remove the guns from the hands and shoulders of people who are not in the law enforcement business.”

In 1999 USA Today published an article by Walter Shapiro which stated, “Repealing the Second Amendment is no cause for the faint-hearted, but it remains the only way for liberals to trigger an honest debate on the future of our bullet-plagued society. So what if anti-gun advocates have to devote the next 15 or 20 years to the struggle? The cause is worth the political pain. Failing to take bold action condemns all of us to spend our lives cringing in terror every time we hear a car backfire.”

Going back to 1965 the Washington Post writes, “We are inclined to think that every firearm in the hands of anyone who is not a law enforcement officer constitutes an incitement to violence. Let’s come to our senses before the whole country starts shooting itself up on all its Main Streets in a delirious kind of High Noon.”

In 1993, before becoming Barack Obama’s Vice President, Joseph Biden said that “Banning guns is an idea whose time has come.” The former Republican Senator from Rhode Island, John Chaffee, once said, “As you know, my position is we should ban all handguns, get rid of them, no manufacture, no sale, no importation, no transportation, no possession of a handgun.”

Tell me again how the ultimate goal is the total repealing of the right of private citizens to own guns; the facts prove otherwise. In 1992 L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley stated it clearly enough in his arguments in support of the Brady Bill, “Yes, I’m denying you your rights.”

And that’s it right there, there are already enough laws on the books which violate our right to keep and bear arms, and passing one more is not going to make us any safer, nor will it prevent them from calling for more gun control laws the next time there is another public shooting; and believe me, there will be more of them until we admit that guns aren’t the problem; stupid people are.

Those who call for stricter gun laws, for tighter restrictions on who can own guns, or what type guns the people are allowed to own, fail to realize the ultimate purpose for which the 2nd Amendment was written.

In 1833 Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said this in regards to the rights protected by our 2nd Amendment, “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

In 1846 the courts ruled, “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.” (Source: Nunn vs. State)

Going back even further in time, in Bliss v Commonwealth, the courts ruled, “For, in principle, there is no difference between a law prohibiting the wearing of concealed arms, and a law forbidding the wearing such as are exposed; and if the former be unconstitutional, the latter must be so likewise. But it should not be forgotten, that it is not only a part of the right that is secured by the constitution; it is the right entire and complete, as it existed at the adoption of the constitution; and if any portion of that right be impaired, immaterial how small the part may be, and immaterial the order of time at which it be done, it is equally forbidden by the constitution.”

Then in 1878 the court ruled, “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.” (Source: Wilson v State)

The problem lies in the fact that today people constantly tell me that our Founders could never have foreseen the capabilities of the weapons which would be produced in the future. That may very well be true; they may not have foreseen weapons that can fire hundreds of rounds per minute. But if you look at the reason why we have a 2nd Amendment, so that we might retain the ability to rise up against a tyrannical government, does it not make sense that we be similarly armed as our government is, or any standing army it might call upon to defend itself against an angry populace?

In 1790 Roger Sherman said the following in regards for the reasons for allowing the people the right to keep and bear arms, “[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.”

You see, words have meanings, and people today think the word arms means handguns and hunting rifles. But that is not what the word arms means now nor is it what it meant when our Founders wrote the 2nd Amendment. The word arms as a derivative of the Latin word arma; which means the weapons of a warrior.

People today laugh at me when I tell them that we need our guns, now more than ever. They say that tyranny will never come to America and I say it’s already here; they just refuse to see it. In 1788 Patrick Henry argued, not only against ratification of the Constitution, but also in regards to how it left little means for the people to resist tyranny. In his lengthy speech Mr. Henry declared, “Oh, Sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical; no longer democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? ”

Those who call for stricter gun laws are among the most ignorant people I have ever met; as they do not know, nor do they care, why we have a 2nd Amendment, and why so many of us fight so fervently against any and all infringements of the rights it protects. These people would willingly surrender their ability to rise up against their government for the empty promises for each and every violation of our unalienable rights.

History is rife with examples of what happens to a people when they allow their government to disarm them. Ask any of those who witnessed the assassination of all those who resisted the governments of Stalin and Mao.

Our government already exceeds the powers given it by our Constitution and has enacted many laws which violate most of the rights protected by the Bill of Rights; what do you think it would do if it were successful in disarming the people of this country?

You can laugh at us now, call us old fashioned and part of the culture of guns that is on its way out. Laugh all you want, but when the time comes that we are proven right, when tyranny comes knocking on your front door, do not be surprised if we do not defend you or your rights. In fact, do not be surprised at all if you see us standing around laughing at YOU; saying we told you so.

But you won’t listen to us now, and you probably won’t then either. All I have to say is that karma has a way of coming round to bite idiots in the ass; and your time’s a coming….

The year was 1770 and for the last two years British Regulars had been sent to maintain order and enforce the Kings law upon the unruly Colonists in Boston. In early March a single sentry was guarding his post when an angry crowd assembled and began verbally and physically harassing him.
Eight other soldiers came to his aid and they too were subjected to the same treatment; being verbally assaulted and hit with clubs, rocks and snowballs. Whether they were justified or not, shots were fired and when the musket smoke cleared 3 people laid dead in the streets with others injured.

The Bostonians, particularly Samuel Adams and John Hancock, used this ‘massacre’ to further fan the flames of discord between the Colonists and the Crown. A trial was to be held and 8 soldiers, 1 officer, and 4 civilians faced charges of murder in what had quickly become known as the Boston Massacre.

At the time John Adams, cousin to the firebrand Samuel Adams, was an average lawyer with a wife and children who also lived in Boston. Having repeatedly sought council from other lawyers, who refused to represent them, the defendants sought out Adams to represent them in court. Adams may have had strong feelings about what happened, but above all he valued justice and the examination of facts. Even though he may have had strong feelings about the British occupation of his city, he could not allow innocent men to be sent to the gallows; so he chose to represent them, to the ire of his fellow Bostonians I might add.

On December 4, 1770 Adams stood before the court and uttered a phrase that I have oft repeated in my articles, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

You can call me whatever you want, political author, patriot, or rabble rouser if you wish; but above all else I am a lover of the truth. One of my biggest gripes with so many people is that they refuse to accept, or even acknowledge the truth when it conflicts with their existing beliefs.

In a perfect world facts would be the foundation upon which our opinions are built. But this isn’t a perfect world and people often develop opinions without any facts to support them. Then, to make matters worse, they become incensed when someone has the unmitigated gall to use facts against their argument. As they typically have no facts of their own to support their position, they are left only with catch phrases, slogans and insults to defend their position.

It saddens me to admit it, but there simply is no winning a discussion of any kind when one side refuses to deal solely with facts and evidence; it simply cannot be done. I have learned this valuable lesson the hard way; with years of arguing with people who refuse to provide facts in support of their positions under my belt.

How can you argue over who is best qualified to be president of the United States when the sole reason many choose to vote for a particular candidate is that they are better than the other one? How can you argue over whether the government is doing a good job when the standards by which a government should be measured, (the Constitution) is not even allowed into the discussion, or you are told that it is no longer relevant?

A perfect example of this lack of using facts, or of people not fully grasping the meaning of words can be found in the argument over whether Barack Obama ever should have been allowed to become President of the United States.

Obama supporters call those of us who question his eligibility birthers, but in fact we should be called truthers, because all we ask is that you consider the facts regarding his eligibility; and the facts prove that he WAS NOT eligible to become President; and therefore every law he signed could very well be considered null and void; including his precious Affordable Care Act.

Let the facts be heard…

Article 2 of the Constitution states, “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President…” If you’ll note, it does not say citizen, it says Natural Born Citizen. There is a difference.

When the delegates to the convention which would produce our Constitution arrived in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin did so in possession of a book sent to him by his Dutch friend, Charles W.F. Dumas. That book was The Law of Nations, by Emer de Vattel. During their deliberations Franklin is said to have repeatedly referred to Vattel’s thoughts on the subjects under debate. Therefore it would be prudent to at least consider what Vattel has to say about what defines a Natural Born Citizen.

In Section 212, Citizens and Natives, Vattel writes, “The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” (My emphasis)

Now that we know what is meant by the phrase Natural Born Citizen, let us see whether Barack Obama met those qualifications. Barack Obama’s mother was Stanley Ann Dunham, a US citizen from Wichita Kansas; so far so good. However, Obama’s father was Barack Obama Sr. a Kenyan citizen. OOOPS!!! So, although Obama’s mother was a citizen, his father wasn’t; which makes Barack Obama Jr a citizen, but NOT a Natural Born Citizen.

A great deal of fuss, even by not yet president Donald Trump, was made over the location of Obama’s birth; whether it was in Kenya or in a hospital in Hawaii as Obama claimed. This was an intentional game of sleight of hand to divert attention away from the question of whether he met the qualification of being a Natural Born Citizen. The obviously fake birth certificate Obama provided appeared to be enough to appease most, but the fact remains that Obama was NEVER eligible to hold the office of president.

Sorry, facts do not lie…

I have been asked if I honestly believe the Republicans would allow an unqualified Democrat to become president. My answer to them is yes, if it would call into the question the eligibility of one of their own who was also running for president. Ted Cruz is an American citizen, of that there is no doubt. But how can he be a Natural Born Citizen when, at the time of his birth, his father was not a U.S. citizen? Cruz’s father, Rafael, did not become a Naturalized American citizen until 2008, thirty five years AFTER Ted Cruz was born. So had the GOP raised the question of Obama’s eligibility, it would also have shined a spotlight on Ted Cruz’s ineligibility as well.

Another, more recent reason why I say that facts no longer matter is the ruckus over the tearing down of monuments dedicated to Confederate icons because they represent slavery and injustice. Again, let the facts be heard…

You are taught that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves and that the North were the liberators, and the South the cruel oppressors who held these poor unfortunate human beings in a state of bondage.

Yes, slavery did exist, and yes it may have been more widely practiced during the years immediately following the Civil War; but it was not the cause for which either side fought!

Why would the South choose to remain apart from the Union and risk war against the North just to keep their slaves if all they had to do to accomplish that was agree to ratify an amendment to the Constitution which would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable in America?

In 1861, after the secession of Southern States had begun, an amendment was proposed and passed by both Houses of Congress to entice the Southern States back into the Union and avoid a war between the North and the South. This amendment is known as the Corwin Amendment, and ironically, had it been ratified it would have become the 13th Amendment, not the one we know now which ended slavery.

The text of this Corwin Amendment is as follows: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

In his Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln not only referenced this proposed amendment, he gave his support for it, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service … holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

If the war was truly fought by the South to keep their slaves, and by the North to free them, why would the South choose war over the less hazardous choice of amendment the Constitution to make slavery permanent, and why would Lincoln offer his support for an amendment that made permanent the very thing he was about to start to put an end to?

C’mon, something just doesn’t sound right with the argument that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves when this alone proves that simply was not so.

But if that wasn’t enough, what about what Lincoln wrote to his friend Horace Greeley, stating his real reasons for engaging in war against the South, “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

Hell, in his Inaugural Address Lincoln stated, “I have no purpose, directly or in-directly, 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.” And you’re still going to sit there and argue that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves? I’d love to see how you support that position other than the argument that this is what you were taught in school.

If you want the truth, Lincoln didn’t even care about the Union, not per se. What he did care about was the revenue that was being generated for the operation of his government at the expense of the Southern States. On April 15, 1861 Lincoln issued a proclamation against the Confederate States which says, “Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed therein.”

In his first message to Congress, also written in 1861, Lincoln states, “My policy sought only to collect the Revenue (a 40 percent federal sales tax on imports to Southern States under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861).”

The decision to secede, much like the decision of our Founders to declare their independence from England, was not one that they came to hastily or without concern for the consequences. But as the Declaration of Independence states, “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.”

Who is government to deny the States this fundamental right? Hell, even Lincoln endorsed such a position years earlier, when he made the following comments to the House of Representatives in 1848, “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, most sacred right- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to excercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own, of so much territory as the inhabit.”

While slavery was mentioned in many of the declarations of secession, it was not the only cause mentioned. When South Carolina became the first state to secede they issued their own declaration which stated, “The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, three-fourths (75%) of them are expended at the North (to subsidize Wall Street industries that elected Lincoln).”

The Civil War was not about slavery, it was about unfair taxation and the oppression of a segment of our country by its government. It was, in fact, a second war for independence. And because you have been ‘taught’ that it was about slavery you believe it.

However, once again, the facts prove otherwise…

I could go on and on, and on with this; even delving into what you would most likely say were wild tin foil hat conspiracy theories. But the fact is that the truth is out there, and it is readily awaiting that you seek it out and apply it to your thinking.

Unfortunately I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I think people are not only content with their ignorance, they actually fear the truth. I think that deep down people realize that if they were to seek out the truth it would impose upon them the obligation of acting upon that and, not only changing their beliefs, but standing up for the truth against an out of control oppressive tyrant, (the United States government).

I think that’s simply too much to ask of most people. Yet on March 20, 1775 Patrick Henry stood before his fellow Virginians and said, “… 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.”

So I suppose the only remaining question is; do you have the courage to face the truth, or are you among those who will continue to believe the lies you have been, and continue to be told?

Your call…

Although the dust has settled somewhat after the tragic shooting that occurred at a country music concert in Las Vegas, we still do not have any real information as to the motive which led the alleged shooter, Stephen Paddock, to open fire on a crowd of innocent concertgoers. We know what weapons the alleged shooter had with him in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Casino, we know how many rounds he supposedly fired, and we know that he had been there for days before he supposedly began firing into the crowd.

If you’ll notice I repeatedly said alleged and supposedly. I did that on purpose as I believe we will never know the truth as to whether Stephen Paddock was the one pulling the trigger which killed all those innocent people, or whether this was another false flag event designed solely to fan the flames for stricter gun control legislation. The media will continue to report on this story as they always do; as tragic shootings make for good ratings and helps them in perpetuating a state of fear amongst the populace; which then makes it much easier for our politicians to enact laws that they tell us are designed to prevent things like this from happening again.

I know that people are emotional about this and want something to be done which might prevent them from becoming the victim of the next deranged person who decides to open fire into a crowd of people, but passing more laws which violate a fundamental right is not the answer.

Isn’t it against the law to kill someone? Isn’t it against the law in most places to fire a weapon inside city limits? Weren’t some of the weapons found at the scene already illegal for a common citizen to own? That’s at least three laws right there that the shooter was in violation of; I don’t see how passing another law is going to prevent something like this from happening again…I really don’t. First of all, criminals are criminals; it is their nature NOT to obey the laws society puts into place to protect the average citizen. Secondly, if a decent person snaps, or suffers from some form of mental illness, obeying whatever gun laws we have enacted is probably the last thing on their mind.

Almost immediately following the shooting in Vegas I read that people are blaming the NRA, (National Rifle Association), and its powerful lobby for preventing common sense gun laws from being enacted. I don’t know, am I daft, or is it not common sense that one shouldn’t kill someone else who is in no way threatening their lives or their property? That common sense law dates back to Sinai when Moses brought down the Ten Commandments wherein God had told him that “Thou shalt not kill.” A lot of good that law has done in preventing men from killing one another; as these type shootings are occurring with increasing frequency.

I dunno about blaming the NRA on this; they weren’t on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel with their hands on the trigger; Stephen Paddock supposedly was. Plus, if I recall correctly the NRA sponsors hunters safety training classes which teach people certain basic firearms safety rules. Among the rules they teach are, always keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire the weapon; always assume a weapons is loaded, and always keep the barrel pointed in a safe direction away from people. I know this for a fact because I took the NRA’s hunters safety class at least 4 times just for the chance to go to the range afterwards and fire a bunch of someone else’s ammunition.

Guns have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a house that had guns; and they weren’t locked away in safes our lying around with trigger locks on them either. My parents both kept loaded firearms close at hand after the sun went down and my father typically answered the door at night with a pistol in his hand. I grew up learning to shoot AND to respect firearms for what they are; a dangerous tool.

When I attended high school it was routine to see pickup trucks in the parking lots with shotguns and high powered hunting rifles hanging on racks in the rear windows. Why is it that in the 4 years I attended high school never did a student take one of those weapons onto campus and use it to kill their fellow students?

I have guns in my house now, and I have passed the same training I received as a kid onto my wife and son. None of the guns has ever been fired anywhere except the firing range; they are there for our protection and we all know how to use them, and use them in a safe manner.

Yes guns have become more sophisticated and deadly, but the nonsense that they are more readily available is just that; nonsense. I can recall a time when one could pick up a Sears and Roebuck catalog and order a hunting rifle through the mail; no background check, no ten day waiting period; just send them your check or money order and they sent you a gun in the mail. Yet we never had these mass shootings like we see with disturbing frequency now. Why, do you think that is?

Could it possibly be that the respect we show for human life is at an all time low? Could it be that the media; in the form of the movies we watch, the lyrics we listen to in our songs, and the video games our children play all glorify violence, yet at the same time our children aren’t being taught the most basic of gun safety rules or to respect human life? Could it also be that, for generations, we have pampered our children; telling them that they are special, that they deserve success, and that when they don’t achieve it they simply cannot handle the failures that are a common occurrence in everyone’s life? C’mon, participation awards so that children’s feelings won’t get hurt if they don’t win…is it any wonder we have a nation full of overly sensitive pansies who snap and go on shooting sprees or commit suicide because they were bullied?

When I attended high school there was a guy named Don Webb who made it his personal mission in life to make my life a living hell. Every chance he got he would insult and tease me; making me feel about two inches tall at times. Not once did I consider bringing a gun to school to put an end to Don Webb, and I certainly never considered taking my own life because I couldn’t handle a bit of bullying. I simply grew tough; kind of like in that old Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue. In fact, a few years back I found Don Webb on Facebook and sent him a message thanking him for toughening me up; making me impervious to the insults of others.

Yet already, and it shouldn’t surprise me where, we have heard calls for more ‘common sense gun laws’ to be passed. Of course it would be California, and of course it would be left leaning politicians who are calling for such measures, but just the other day Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, and State Senator Kamala Harris called for increased gun control efforts. Newsom, who is running for governor, declared that he is heartbroken that we can’t pass commonsense gun laws in our nation. Of course they also said that California must take the lead, or to use their words, “…continue to chart the path of rationality.” These comments come from two people who both support sanctuary cities which harbor untold numbers of illegal alien gang members who routinely commit acts of violence in the State of California. But it isn’t a people problem, it is a gun problem; so let’s pass more laws which punish everyone except those who refuse to obey the law anyway. Makes perfect sense to me.

Let me get this straight; the people of this country, and of the various States, pass constitutions which created government. These governments then turn around and want to pass laws prohibiting the people from owning certain classes of weapons or extended round magazines. Yet at the same time, these legislators have no problem with those who work for them (enforcing the laws they pass) from owning the very weapons they prohibit us from owning.

Is it that people are unable to think, or is it that they have been programmed to live in a constant state of fear of these so-called ‘assault weapons’ that they will accept any law which our lawmakers promise will keep them safe? Don’t they see that this is the perfect recipe for tyranny?

One of the biggest problems, as I see it, is that people do not know, or care, why we have a 2nd Amendment. I constantly hear that it is so that people can own guns to hunt, or to protect their homes and belongings. Not so! Our 2nd Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to provide the people with the ability to resist the tyranny of their government. The 2nd Amendment was our fail safe when our peaceful petitions for redress of grievances failed and our government became tyrannical and oppressive; it gives the people the power to resist the unjust authority of tyrants.

I could provide an almost endless litany of quotes to back this position up, but I will limit myself to two for the sake of brevity. After our Constitution was written, Noah Webster wrote An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution. In it Webster states, “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.” That alone seems to make it pretty clear why we retain the right to keep and bear arms; and it certainly isn’t so we can hunt.

But then there is this, taken from a speech given by Patrick Henry in opposition to the proposed Constitution on June 5, 1788, “The Honorable Gentleman who presides, told us, that to prevent abuses in our Government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. Oh, Sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical; no longer democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?”

Our Founders must be looking down upon us thinking we have lost our minds; allowing government to pass all these laws which restrict our ability to resist its authority, then at the same time allowing those agencies which enforce the laws they pass to become as well equipped and trained as any standing army. I remember awhile back I was driving through town and I saw two motorcycle cops who both had AR-15’s with 30 round magazines mounted on a rack attached to the rear bumper of their bikes. Motorcycle cops for crying out loud! But then at the same time California routinely makes it harder for private citizens to own a semi automatic AR-15, or any removable magazine rifle that can hold more than 10 rounds.

I hate to use profanity in my articles, but are you people fucking crazy? C’mon, you let them own guns that you can’t own, and you don’t for a minute think that this ends badly for your liberty?

People say that couldn’t happen here in America, tyranny would never come to our country; we have a Constitution which would prevent it, we have a Bill of Rights which protects against it, and we get to choose the leaders who pass the laws we must obey. It couldn’t happen because the people would see it and do something about it.

In a second argument opposing the Constitution Patrick Henry warned against such a mindset, “And, Sir, would not all the world, from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad. Shew me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty? I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.”

Our Constitution is no good unless the people demand that it be adhered to by those whom they elect. Our Bill of Rights is little use to us when the people would rather sacrifice the rights it protects for the promise of safety and comfort. Tyranny isn’t just coming, it’s already here; yet what have the great mass of the people done to prevent it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING is what they have done. They are more concerned that someone from their political party is in control, not that the actual controls over what government can and cannot do are being enforced.

Thomas Jefferson was similar to I in that he collected quotes he felt were of great importance. He kept them in something he called a Commonplace Book, and among those found in Jefferson’s Commonplace Book was the following, taken from Cesare Beccaria’s work, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764, “It is a false idea of utility to sacrifice a thousand real advantages for the sake of one disadvantage which is either imaginary or of little consequence; this would take fire away from men because it burns, and water because it drowns people; this is to have no remedy for evils except destruction.
Laws forbidding people to bear arms are of this nature; they only disarm those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”

I am sad that all those people lost their lives in this, the most recent of shootings. But the answer is not to deprive the people of an unalienable right which allows them the means to resist tyranny wherever it may raise its ugly head. The answer lies in teaching our children the proper use and safe handling of firearms, while instilling in them the value of a human life.

Unfortunately, I will be told that I cannot force morality upon people, it violates their rights. But then these hypocrites are perfectly fine with turning around and calling for measures which violate one of MY rights.

Well not anymore; I’ve had enough of your ignorance and your lack of concern for my right to keep and bear arms. Lest you forget, the first American Revolution began when the Kings men attempted to disarm the patriots at Lexington and Concord. Keep pushing and your actions will go down in the history books as the cause of the third American Revolution.

And just out of curiosity, if you’re wondering why I skipped the 2nd American Revolution, it is because you don’t want to know the truth regarding what you refer to as the American Civil War. But that is neither here nor there as it pertains to the subject currently under discussion. Just know this, there are a great many people who I know personally who refuse to obey any further violations of their rights, and it would be prudent not to piss them off; for they are ready and willing to fight to retain their rights. The question is; are you ready to fight to deprive them of those rights; or are you a coward who will ask your lawmakers to do it for you, and then send law enforcement out to enforce the unconstitutional violation of a constitutionally protected right?

Yes, Las Vegas was a tragedy; over 50 people killed and many more injured. But Las Vegas will pale in comparison to what happens in America should you try to take our guns away. Keep that in mind.

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine
whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they
are to have any property they can call their own…”
~George Washington~
Address to the Continental Army
(August 27, 1776)

I think people might not believe me when I tell them they are slaves due to the fact that they have so much freedom of choice in their lives. I can understand that, after all you have the choice of choosing where you want to go on vacation, what career path you will take, what to eat for supper every night, what to do for entertainment, and the list goes on and on. So I can see how it might be hard for people to believe me when I say that they are slaves.

Slavery is a word that most people understand the moment they hear it; yet in this instance it may not have been the best choice of words to describe the state that people today live in. Had I been more thoughtful I might have chosen another word; serfdom. The problem with the word serfdom is that I don’t think everyone would readily understand it like they understand the word slavery.

Serfdom is a form of slavery, make no mistake about that; but serfdom gives those who live as serfs quite a bit more freedom than does actual chattel slavery. While you may not know serfdom by the word itself, anyone who has seen the film Robin Hood in any of its incarnations probably has a fundamental understanding of what it is.

Serfdom, simply defined, is the status of being a peasant bound to a lord or master who owns all the land while you are allowed to work to serve the kingdom. The lord or master provides justice, or at least in our case, the illusion of justice, and then at the same time you are required to pay tribute to that master in the form of taxes. Serfdom my grant those who are serfs more freedom than chattel slavery would have; but make no mistake about it, it IS a form of bondage.

If you took a sliding scale and put absolute freedom at zero and absolute slavery at ten, then serfdom would probably be somewhere in the range of 5-8; depending upon how benevolent your master was and how restrictive the laws or oppressive the taxes he imposed upon you were. But it isn’t freedom, not by a long shot.

Absolute freedom, or liberty, is defined as: “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.” (Locke’s Second Treatise) Thomas Jefferson would paraphrase that definition as follows: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”

How free one truly is can best be determined by two things; the extent to which they can exercise their rights without interference or restriction, and the ability of people to own property. Yet in all actuality those two things are one and the same. Some people today, such as NBC News political correspondent Chuck Todd, believe that government grants us our rights. That belief diametrically opposes what our Founders believed; which is that our rights come from God, and that they are as much a part of our being as our DNA. As such, government has no authority to restrict or violate them…none whatsoever, unless of course people do not stand up against any and all violations of them.

But our rights are not like our eyes, our hands, or our feet in that they are not part of our body per se; rather they are things which we as human beings are all entitled to as freemen. In that sense they are more like possessions; or more accurately, property. James Madison defines property as, “…that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

Using that as a definition for property, in a truly free society my home should be my property as long as I have paid it off; my vehicles should be my property as long as I have paid them off, and yes, my rights, as part of my nature as a human being are also considered my property, as no one else, not society nor government, should be allowed to violate them.

Madison’s definition for property comes from something he wrote over two hundred years ago, back in 1792. But Madison didn’t stop there, he went on to say:

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

In a nation that makes the proud claim of being the land of the free, the things Madison describes should be cherished and protected from anyone, including government, which would deprive its people from enjoying those basic tenets of freedom.

But then Madison makes a poignant statement, “Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.” I don’t know about you, but it sure seems to me that, using that as a guidepost, there sure seems to be an excess of power which is held by government in this country today; and there has been for quite some time I might add.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black believed that our Bill of Rights contained absolutes which were put there intentionally by our Founders. Therefore it makes sense that the rights which the first ten amendments to the Constitution protect are also absolute; meaning there can be no restrictions placed upon them, nor can we be charged a fee or be required to obtain a permit to exercise them.

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

How many laws do we obey which violates our most basic freedoms simply because our government says we must; and hands down punishment for those who do not obey their edicts? Is that how you define freedom; meekly obeying whatever laws our government hands down? In 1967 Justice Potter Stewart stated, “The right to defy an unconstitutional statute is basic in our scheme. Even when an ordinance requires a permit to make a speech, to deliver a sermon, to picket, to parade, or to assemble, it need not be honored when it’s invalid on its face.” (Source: Walker v. Birmingham)

The extent to which we have surrendered our most basic of rights to government is absolutely mind boggling, and were our Founders alive today they would be asking us why we have not resisted such violations of them without even a whimper of protest. Yet people still have the audacity to proclaim that America is the land of the free. To keep this within its PG rating, I’ll simply say, what a load of cow manure; and I haven’t even begun to discuss physical property yet!

The dream of many people is to someday own a piece of land of their own which they can call home. People work, and struggle for years under the burden of a mortgage so that they can one day own a home of their own. You may currently be doing so, and I did for years until I finally paid off all that I had borrowed from the bank to have a home of my own. But is it mine; really?

How is it that an entity which was created by man, (government) can levy taxes against my property for whatever they deem is necessary to keep their operations going, and if I refuse to pay I can be physically removed from my property and arrested or killed should I resist? How is it that when I die and leave my home to my son, he can be taxed for the right to live in the house his parents purchased and left to him?

Is that property truly mine, or am I being allowed to live on it and charged an annual fee by the actual owners?

Not only are we taxed to live on the land which we believe is our own, but government imposes burdens and restrictions upon what we can and cannot do with that land. Want to add another room to your home and you must first obtain a permit. You can’t legally subdivide your property and sell it to others without obtaining permission from government. In some instances you cannot own livestock to provide sustenance for your family as doing so violates city code or zoning ordinances.

How can you honestly say that your home is truly yours when you are taxed for the privilege of living in it and there are so many restrictions placed upon what you can do with it? The fact is that nobody owns their home, not even the richest among us; government does.

I’m absolutely certain that a great many people in this country have never heard the term allodial title, or allodial ownership. An allodial title is defined as, “…a real property ownership system where the real property is owed free and clear of any superior landlord.” Under an allodial title you own the land and no one can take it from you, or tell you what you can and cannot do with it. I can’t be certain, but I don’t think there are many, if any at all, who hold allodial titles to their land. In most cases people believe that they own the land, but in reality they are allowed to live upon it as long as they pay taxes and abide by the restrictions government imposes upon the tenets of THEIR land.

I don’t want to make this about the Civil War, but when South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860 all the land that was South Carolina became free from any federal jurisdiction and authority; including Fort Sumter. As they could no longer have been considered as part of the federal Union, for federal forces to occupy land within their state was technically the occupation of a hostile force; exacerbated when Abraham Lincoln sent troops to resupply Fort Sumter; which any sovereign nation would agree is an act of war.

I bring this up only because I want to show how the federal, and to a lesser extent, the State governments view land ownership. They believe that land is theirs and that the occupants of that land are there by their mercy and must abide by their rules regarding what they can and cannot do with that land.

Are you aware that the federal government claims ownership of at least 30% of the land in the Western United States, and in some areas that number jumps up to 80%. As with everything else that the government does, a bureaucracy was established to manage that land and penalize those who violated the laws government passed in regards to the management of that land. This agency is the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM for short.

Those who truly understand the Constitution as it pertains to what land the government can rightfully own believe the BLM to be an unconstitutional entity which routinely violates the concept of private land ownership and the distinction between federal land and private property.

In the past few years there have been confrontations between informed citizens and the BLM over supposed infractions of federal law; such as violations in grazing and water rights. The most notable of these confrontations were the Bundy standoff in Nevada, and the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Reserve in Oregon by LaVoy Finicum; which ultimately lead to his being gunned down by law enforcement.

Of course the media portrays these individuals as radicals and dangers to society; just like they did the Branch Davidians; who also suffered 76 fatalities when government enforcers assaulted their compound in Waco, Texas. The media does so because if it ever caught on that the government was unconstitutionally grabbing land, and taxing people for the right to use it, there would most likely be an uprising of monumental proportions. Then again, with the apathy and complacency I see in many, maybe not.

The point is, we as Americans don’t own diddly squat; not our homes, and not our rights. Our government owns it all, and it only allows us to use them as long as we abide by their rules and pay our annual tributes in the form of income and property taxes. Try to resist them and you will find yourself facing the ire and the might of an endless litany of government agencies which will be brought to bear upon you.

All one has to do is look at how the government can enact laws upon how, when, and under what circumstances one can do to defend what people believe is their property to realize that they are not as free as they thought. Even then, many are completely fine with not being allowed to use force to defend their property; they would rather dial 911 and pass the buck onto law enforcement; which any thinking person could see makes them dependent upon government for their protection. And, as Thomas Jefferson said, “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

In any case, I do wish to apologize for repeatedly saying that you are a slave, you are not. But you certainly are not free; not by any definition of the word. What you are is a serf who is entitled to enjoy certain privileges as long as you do not rock the boat.