Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Extortion... and government.

What is extortion? Extortion is, simply, a form of abuse that causes a person to act involuntarily by coercion. Coercion is the use of physical, emotional, or economic force to fulfill a goal.

One must admit, that government, by nature, and laws are coercive. Any and all acts, written by the government, must have a stick. The carrot is optional, and only for those enacting the law anyway.

If one is to define extortion as enforcement of a status against the will of the person upon which the status is being enforced, without the due process of law and judgment under the Common Law system of the Judiciary, including that necessary wall against the abuse that is called the 'Jury', can one claim that any act that seeks to 'regulate' but enforces such regulation with prison sentences is anything but extortion?

If there is a registry, that forces the payment of a fee to be on the registry, that removes the rights and privileges of the offenders, removes the ability of those registrants to travel, to seek gainful employment, to seek and establish residency and removes the rights associated with citizenry in the United States, or any part thereof, then further enforces, by writ, the establishment of that registry as being a registrant of monsters, and to be a civil registry, without the protections of that criminal code... can it be anything but extortion?

So it is with the Sex Offender Registry. They claim the act is nonpunitive, that it is regulatory and only serves to protect the public, but how does it do so? Are we any safer, or any more aware of the problems? Is it not true that those who are most dangerous will find a way, registry or not, to do as they please? If a man chooses to break the law... how can the same law be said to have prevented crime?

No, our system is something quite different than that. Our agreement, by the Constitution, was that all men were innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. A man could not be tried for a crime which he might commit, but for one that he was in the act of committing, or in conspiracy to commit. It was not good enough to have a suspicion of a crime, one had to have reasonable suspicion, upon probable cause to issue the warrant to search for evidence of that crime.

But when the government chooses not to follow its own law, what then? If they can come and search any building, any vehicle, any property at any time, upon reasonable suspicion rather than upon probable cause, have we not lost a great deal? Are we not all guilty until proven innocent, when the burden of proof goes to the person, rather than to the state?

If this is not extortion, please elucidate! Is it not extortion to use the regulation to control the movements of others? Is it not extortion to threaten fines, imprisonment, and humiliation for not cooperating with the registry? Is it not extortion to create a situation in which one cannot leave their home without asking the government for permission?

Is it not extortion to, under the threat of fines, fees, or prison time, disallow them use of the public parks for which they pay their tax money? Is it not extortion to deny them the right to leave their homes, the right to leave the country and sell those homes to find gainful employ elsewhere?

No.. it is not extortion at this point. Extortion goes simply to the requirement of the commsision of an act. This goes far beyond that, into asserting control over a person under color of law, and reducing him to a vassal of the organization that created the registry. Is, however, vassalage enough? The vassal had the right to supplicate his lord for relief of the conditions.... no, this goes beyond vassalage, as well, into flat-out slavery.

The Adam Walsh act goes into a realm of attainder that creates not just restrictions, but outright ownership of the citizens under it under the rule of law. The persons are not free to go out of the state, to go out of the country, on pain of prison time, without complying with that registration. If they have ever travelled in interstate trade (upon an interstate highway or by any other means) they fall under the regulation. They no longer have any right, under the Act, to choose their own homes, to purchase property of their choice, to work at the places of their choice, and are punished, not as a single person for his own acts, but by further restrictions when other registrants or non registrants cause problems. They also no longer would appear to have the right in some states to disaster relief, to education, and in some states to vote. In the most restrictive states, even the right to family is denied.

Is this not the very definition of ownership? If one is forced to be unable to live anywhere but where the registry says, cannot have a family but in the proscribed manner of the registry, subject to revocation on the whim of the registry, cannot have a home that cannot be taken under the registry, cannot own any property that cannot be searched at any time, cannot speak out in public forums, cannot work in public places, that they seek to restrict their travels upon public transportation, that they restrict from parks, homes, neighborhoods, and cities... if they can choose if you go to prison for life, not for what you do, but for what you might do... is this not the very meaning of being a slave?

And by what right does the Government which we instituted, which we supported, which we held, enslave us?

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