I want to give you people the greatest gift any man can give. It's something you already have, something that is vital to any society, and to any individual. It is knowledge, knowledge which has been forgotten, abandoned, or stolen.
No man can be a slave, save by choice. Even if the would-be masters choose to kill him, he is not a slave, for it is for his resistance that they are threatened. In this nation we have accepted a bill of goods that frankly, is as full of manure as a fertilizer carrier.
Your rights. Those rights were recognized by the constitution, preserved from interference by that document, and by your interaction with it. So long as you preserve your rights, they cannot be taken, they cannot be stolen, they cannot be reduced. Those guarantees go above all other law.
Those protections do not matter much when the Constitution is 'that silly old piece of parchment'. Without the foremost right, the right to protect those rights.. they mean nothing at all.
Life, liberty, property, and the ability to defend all of those....
One can say that he has a right to property, but unless he has property in his rights, those rights are meaningless. They are as much real property as anything one can have, or one can hold. They defend all things one can have or hold.
Cannot the governor deputize a felon? Cannot he call them up and determine their skills to be needful in the defense of the state, the community? Cannot the governor or congress institute a draft in order to utilize them for the purpose of defense? There is no bar to that, nor can there be a legal bar, therefore, all felons are still a part of the militia.
Moreover, the nature of that right, the right to protect your property, your lives, your families, and other innocents is still in your hands. No man can prevent you from carrying a firearm, nor a sword. Via fear of punishment we give up the exercise of those rights, but they are still there.
There were reasons that the Constitution spoke of those founding rights as being inalienable. Anything can become a weapon, from words and reason, to fists and bullets. Your mind is a weapon, as is your courage. They are the most threatening weapon of all against tyrants.
But mind alone, words alone, fists alone are meaningless when a man is faced with a superior force. Thus the guarantee of that right to keep and bear arms, against enemies foreign, domestic, against tyranny and those who would pervert the meaning and nature of the Constitution, and bind you down into that very slavery.
The founding fathers recognized that the law would be used eventually to try to deny that right, to try to punish those attempting to exercise it. Indeed, it is rare to see any person carrying a firearm in this day and age. As the carrying of those arms becomes rarer, we see the visible increase in crime, in murder, in rape. Those who are defenseless are the preferred target to those who would commit crime.
This includes the greatest crime of all... the legislative crime of the ages, the attempt to, by law, enforce the will of one man over another.
Those that say a felon has never been allowed arms in our past forget some of the most famous. Wyatt Earp, for instance, was a felon. Indeed, our very founding fathers were felons, and terrorists. They were guilty of capital treason, a crime for which they could be tortured, maimed, and executed, and the same could be wrought upon their family.
There is no 'except for felons' clause in the constitution. To write one in would be a bill of attainder, and unconstitutional.
If it were intended that men be protected from their own actions, would we not have placed that within the founding documents? Is it not the intent of the rule of law, under common law, to have individual responsibility for one's actions, and not be bound by statute, nor by regulation, but by the past, and by individual responsibility?
Instead, we move toward Roman Law, a law where you are guilty until proven innocent, a law by which the powers of the state override the will of the people, their rights, and even the rule of law itself. When any person can be tried upon that which they have already been tried, or punished for that for which society has determined punishment, the rule of law has fallen.
Is it not the purpose of Common Law under the U.S. system to make peaceable a society, and via the hard coin of punishment to make peaceable again the criminal with society? Should those dues be paid, should we not allow them to embrace the society once again? If not, then law has fallen again, and is no longer law, but only tyranny wrought with the hands of hatred.
We've turned our backs on the vote, only to have it taken from us and subverted by politicians selling the political system to corporations which have only their own profit at heart.
We've closed off our oversight of the vote, and no longer have the means to ensure the accuracy of the vote, or the simple idea that the vote is not fraudulent. We no longer keep records of 'voice votes' on controversial topics, and indeed, sometimes pass legislation without a vote, without a voice for the people, or the state.
When the oaths are violated, when the highest laws of all under Common Law are violated, then those who would be our rulers must be reminded that in truth that they are our servants. The violation of the contract on the part of the government does not give them new powers... only destroys the powers that were ceded to them, and returns them to the hands of the people.
The federalists and antifederalists were in agreement in many things... but the single thing that they were most in agreement with was that the powers of government should be limited, and that liberty itself was far greater a security than any government could be.
Individuals, working in concert, make society. Society does not make individuals. Societies working in concert make nations, nations do not make societies. Individuals working in concert make governments by ceding their rights and powers to the government in order that a common goal may be met. Governments do not create rights, nor powers, save by usurpation.
And usurpation is the end of law, of order, and of government.
If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
— George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
— Daniel Webster
"If the king ceases to govern the kingdom, and begins to act as a tyrant, to destroy justice, to overthrow peace, and to break his faith, the man who has taken the oath is free from it, and the people are entitled to depose the king and to set up another, inasmuch as he has broken the principle upon which their mutual obligation depended."-- Manegold
Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other.-- John Locke
If I happen to disappear from this blog.. it's likely I've been arrested. I intend to fully exercise my rights.
"Fiat iustitia ruat cœlum". Let justice be done though the heavens fall!
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
– Samuel Adams
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