Thursday, April 30, 2009

How soon we forget.

Our nation has engaged, over time, so many nations in the pursuit of intangibles, protesting the powers of ignorance, torture, greed, and infamy. But like Neitzche said of old, when you stare into an abyss, the abyss also looks back into you. Too often when we go out searching for monsters to slay within the outside world, our nation finds itself making monsters, in order that it be capable of fighting them.

But where are the real monsters? Are we focused, perhaps, outward because we dare not look at what lies in our own hearts, our own minds, our own souls? There are monsters in the world, aye, but we cannot fight that which we are becoming. We look outward to control others because we have so little self-control. We burden ourselves with laws and practices, bemoaning crime and establishing punishment even as we deny ourselves the opportunities to change those crimes and conditions. We talk of social forces, of the 'greater good', and listen to the sibilant whispers in the night, cryptically promising us 'better lives' and 'hope.

I don't have time today to recount what John Quincy Adams said in the beginning.
John Quincy Adams on U.S. Policy. It suffices, however, to say that he was correct. One does not bring the world to your door out of love for becoming its police man, but for love for what the nation offers, represents, and the light and hope it radiates into the world.

We do not become safer via torture, nor do we become safer by seeking out monsters in the world and entangling ourselves in world affairs.

We become safer by making ourselves so. We become safer by exercising our guardianship of our own nation, and leaving others to their own devices so that grasping politicians cannot subvert the nation to the will of others outside our control.

We become safer by exercising self-control, and self-mastery, by offering redemption to the fallen, and tough but fair policies to those who have transgressed against us. If we mean to be respected, we cannot be respected through fear, only feared. We must be respected, not for the power we wield, but how we wield it.

It avails a man nothing if he has the power of a Titan, and uses it recklessly and foolishly, expending it for no cause. We must offer to the world that which we seek from it. We must allow other nations to make their mistakes, and protect our own. This is not to say we should be isolationist, but very careful and measured within our actions. If we must bring the full force of retribution to bear against a nation, we must also bring the full force of compassion. We must allow a process for redemption, not only for nations, but for peoples. If a nation, or a person transgresses again against us, then we have cause to separate ourselves more fully.

If, however, we leave no means for redemption, no means for reuniting our mutual interests, does it not become a cold and lonely world, as more and more are separated from society? Can society stand when it is divided against itself, and more of its citizens disenfranchised and pushed to its edges, and outside the rule of law?

We've been selling dispensations and indulgences too long. It is time to level the field of law, not only for ourselves, but for all under our control and our influence.

No status is above the law, nor below it. No person is, or should be, greater in his power under the law, or above the law, or holding others below that law. We as a people must move beyond the idea that breakers of the law are less people, or that makers of the law are more important. All are parts of society, and all must work together to reform the society itself.

Here are human rights: Life, liberty, and property, and the ability to best defend all of the above.

All other rights flow from these. The right to life is dependent upon the right to property and the right to liberty. If a man freezes to death, because his property was taken, does that right to life help him? If a man dies because he had no means to defend his property, does the right to property mean anything? Each of those four rights are interdependent... and liberty itself, being a gift of living, is critical to the other three, as if one can legislate away the right to property, or to protection, or to life... do you still maintain the right?

The right to self-protection is one of these most important rights, not just self-protection from other individuals, but groups, and nations. Indeed, our bill of rights was engaged against the nation itself, not just against others who would take them, and the effective means of defense cannot be exercised if its exercise is outlawed. Our rights are our property, a very real property that must also be defended.

But that means of defense is not merely a means by arms, but also a means by words, a means by thought and perception, of learning and conviction. If we choose to defend our nation, our lands, our property, our family, and our very life, we must use all of the tools best suited to the purpose. This includes thought, questioning, argument, remonstrance, and the rule of law itself, along with the arms to deter the rule of law when tyrants bend it to their will. Our nation was created and founded in the objective of preventing and destroying tyranny within itself, from limiting the tyranny of the masses and the tyranny of the government via the republican system, to restoration of the rights at the end of a criminal sentence.

Do you still have rights if you cannot defend them? Do you still have liberty if all other rights are made illegal to exercise? If you cannot question, cannot be secure from government seizures of your property and your rights, cannot be secure from forced confessions, forced intrusions, and have no privacy, do you still have liberty? If the government can, by creation and denial of license, deny you the ability to exercise any of those rights, can you say that the rights are still yours, or has the exercise thereof been alienated to the government, transferred in both substance and material?

And is not that government and this nation also your property? Was it not for this purpose that the entities were created via contract between the people, and the Several States under the Articles of Confederation?

Think upon it, gentlemen and ladies of the nation. Does your petty squabbling over things superficial and transitory really matter when your property is being sold by those who do not own it, traded for their profit and that of their friends by people uncaring of your lives? Does it matter that the 'gays' are being married if your very lives are at risk from people making illusions of problems to divert you from those very real problems that exist? If you're banishing people, and simultaneously preventing them from leaving, preventing them from getting work, preventing them from volunteering in church... what are you really being distracted from?

Is it such a stretch that maybe the property in rights that you are giving up are not yours to give up, but something owned by every citizen in the nation, and barred by contract from giving up for any of them outside of that rule of law?

We talk of mutually binding interests outside of the United States, but forget we are a minority in the world in population. We talk of binding ideals, but our ideals even within the United States are full of conflicts and contradictions. We talk of a 'Christian nation' when everyone defines themselves as Christians but anyone differently as being non-Christian. We talk of racial inequality and ignore the people who are most pushing that inequality.

We talk of 'helping others find democracy' when we ourselves were barred from Democracy, due to its inevitably leading to tyranny. We are a republic. (see articles 22-51)

The founders did not need to know what technology would be available today.. they knew what people held in their hearts, the desire for power, for control, and that siren-song of corruption.

While they themselves had their flaws and mistakes... we have never yet, to this day, followed their precepts, and principles. From the Alien and Sedition acts, to the Internments, to the tortures of Abu Ghraib, the slavery in the Early United States, to the slavery of today... we have failed in both principle and essence.

Maybe it's time to attempt to return to them? When we were closer to the principle, the prevention of tyranny by vote, and tyranny by corporation and monopoly, prevention of tyranny by monetization, and prevention of tyranny by government... we were more prosperous. Note that more prosperous does not equal to more things, or more riches, but implies a balance between our material things, and our debts.

After all, are the things you own yours, or can the government come and take them for a mistake in taxes... one potentially even made by the IRS itself, without any review, without any legal process, or any recourse.

Are you really so free?
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Thursday, April 23, 2009

The reasons for the preceding.

I've been observing with trepidation, and dismay the alteration of the contractual constitutional obligations that the Federal Government holds to the people. I've been studying (heavily) the Federalist Papers, the Constitutional Congresses, the law and writ of the preceding 400 years, the trials that led to the common law and its dimunition under the Uniform Code of Civil Procedures, the processes in the United States of the destruction of that common law, and the role of the juries. It has been... difficult reading, at best, and ultimately the hardest writing I've ever done.

Most of you don't know the person that is TriedByConscience from a hole in the wall.

An introduction: The federalist papers were written with very specific purposes; that is, with the purposes of 'selling' the constitutional contract to the people of the United States. The states operated, through representatives, in the interests of the people to sign and effect the changes in government, and to preserve the rights that pre-existed the constitution itself.

Your link to the Federalist Papers. The language is archaic, and takes some research, there are specific legal meanings to the terms 'unalienable' and many other things written in both the Declaration of Independence, and the constitution itself.
http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fedi.htm

There are also specific legal limitations upon the government enshrined in that set of documents, definitions of the republican form of government (quite different from democracy) that was laid down within the bedrock of the Constitution.

The federalist 26 was the understanding that there was a legal severance within the Constitution itself, if the rule of law was subjugated by the military force, and the military force was augmented to the point of being dangerous to the people, all powers listed within the constitution were null and void... and the states themselves ceased to exist, and the people had the right, obligation, and duty to reform a republican government, protecting the rights of all, and preventing the alienation and transfer of those rights to other parties.

The federalist 44 speaks of bills of attainder, laws written to attack a target class (including the class of the whole) and to reduce the operation of those rights in any circumstances save the criminal justice system via court, and jury trial with commitant jury nullification. John Jay said, in fact, that there was no jury without the right, duty, and power to try the law of the case, as well as the facts. It is true, in fact, that any law can be written, including making it a death sentence to put butter on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich... it is the purpose of the jury to nullify those high tyrannical powers of law.

The federalist 44 also speaks of the dangers of paper money, and the destruction of confidence of those bills of credit (a dollar 'bill' being a bill of credit), via inflation and other devices. Manufactured booms and busts were common in the states under the Articles of Confederation.

The federalist 51 speaks of the importance of binding the parts of the government against each other, and the fact that no part of the government may delegate its power to another part, to private organizations, or to foreign bodies. It also, however, speaks of blunting the 'democratic' process that would allow rights of one party to be destroyed by the vote of another, knowing that to legislate religious, or secular beliefs upon any class of citizens would cause the right to believe itself to be destroyed. The most important right, the right to question, underlays another vital right, that of self-protection.

The federalist 57 speaks of the dangers inherent within the constitutional republic, and the necessary bindings of the legislature, and what would bind them to the people, including that the legislature itself may make no law which does not bind the whole of the people, the legislature, and the friends of the legislature in equal measure.

From beginning to end, the work was a charter of liberty. Liberty is not something created by government, government is, and has always, engaged in its destruction, but the advantages of government are so great that the risk had to be taken, and the bindings laid down against tyranny, including from the democratic process itself.

There were four major rights laid down in the beginning, and all other rights derive from them. According to those founders, those rights were the right of life, of liberty, of property, and the ability to defend all of the above. The rights themselves, at the time of the foundation of that nation, were considered to be property by their very nature. There could never be rights to property, without having property in your rights, allowing legal recourse to seizure of even the rights, as well as the right to defend them against all takers, including the federal government itself.

I may well be a minority in this, it matters nothing at all to me, but it is my firm belief that the second amendment must apply to all, from felons to bureaucrats, from the poorest to the richest. It is the only protection you have, in the United States. Most do not realize that there is no right to police protection.

". . . a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen."--Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)

"Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty
is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public." (Lynch v. NC Dept. Justice)


Keane v. City of Chicago, 98 Ill App 2d 460 (1968)
Hartzler v. City of San Jose, App., 120 Cal. Rptr 5 (1975)
South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. (HOW) 396,15 L.Ed., 433 (1856)
Bowers v. DeVito, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, 686F.2d 616 (1882)
Riss v. City of New York, 293 N.Y. 2d 897 (1968)
Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 477F. Supp. 1262 (E.D.Pa. 1979)
Chapman v. City of Philadelphia, 434 A.2d 753 (Sup. Ct. Penn. 1981)
Warren v. District of Columbia, D.C. App., 444 A.2d 1 (1981)
Calogrides v. City of Mobile, 475 So. 2d 560 (S.Ct. Ala. 1985)
Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)
Marshall v. Winston, 389 S.E. 2nd 902 (Va. 1990)
Davidson v. City of Westminster, 32 C.3d 197,185 Cal. Rptr. 252,649
P.2d 894 (S.Ct. Cal. 1982)
Morgan v. District of Columbia, 468 A2d 1306 (D.C. App. 1983)
Morris v. Musser, 478 A.2d 937 (1984)

At this point, one cannot turn to the police for protection, for they have neither duty nor bond to protect. The second amendment, therefore, becomes the only certain protection in a weary world, and to deny any man the right to self-protect is equally to deny them the right to live, the right to property, the right to liberty, and the right to choose and believe as they see fit.

... 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 a constitutional privilege.
WILSON V. STATE, 33 Ark. 557 (1878)
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
WEBSTER, NOAH, An Examination into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution Defects, and Abuses, 1774

To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

MASON, GEORGE,, during Virginia’'s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380
Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article [the Second Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

COXE, TENCH, under pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian," Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty ——so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator—— and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.
BECCARIA, CESARE, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. – Samuel Adams.

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




The second amendment was not merely the right to self-protect, but to protect your home, your family, and your community, and nation. It was the foundation of the protection of rights, as there was, and remains no legitimate police power under the Federal Government, nor can there be police powers with the ability to protect and be everywhere at once without tyranny following it like night into day.

No man could be divested of his rights, and the power and control of those rights transferred to the government, or any other man. If these precepts had been followed, slavery would have ended long before the civil war. Indeed, the rights to keep and bear arms were considered so important that the North interceded against the governments in the south, after the civil war, to maintain those rights for the people.

Ultimately, it comes down to this:

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

I swore an oath, to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and alleigance to the same.

It is in this spirit, and in knowledge of the oath that I have sworn in the service of this country, which cannot be abrogated, cannot be denied, and cannot be turned away from, that I prepared the following article.
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A declaration of power.

I was asked to rewrite the document The Federal Government: Committing High Treason into the form of a petition. Perhaps I grow too passionate on the subject, but I must follow my oath to that Constitution, even if it means my life. If my life is taken for stating sincere beliefs, because of the potential for actions of others, then, indeed, our government is fallen. This document is a series of declarations and demands, and the providers of this website are not responsible for the opinions, data, and information contained therein. These opinions are my own, as is the petition following, and I hereby release the providers of this website for any responsibility for me stating those opinions without reserve.

A sad day comes to our nation, when our country is wracked with its own internal pains. When the very things we fought against in the foundation of our nation become commonplace in our lands, in our fortunes, in our very lives, become commonplace in our government, then we have ceased to have legitimate governance.

A high treason has been committed, and remains in its commission. Our government was not set out to take our rights, nor was it set out to establish laws to restrict those rights. It, in and of itself has no rights, only the powers laid down in its foundation, the Constitution.

The charges of high treason are never levied lightly, and it is with great sorrow that the people must pronounce them. We, the People of the United states, are weary of the constant assault upon our persons, and upon our dignities, rights, liberties, immunities, and privileges. When, however, a constant train of abuses and usurpations comes upon the body of the people, it is their right, and their duty to levy the charges of treason where they rightly lay.

Governments are, and have always been founded in powers. Our government's powers were made solitary and limited for purposes that cannot be too strongly expressed. The actions of the British Government, the monopoly of the British East India Company, and the works of their agents in the Colonies were quite broad.

How then, have we returned to this place, when law itself is fallen, affects none save those who cannot defend themselves against it? When the high and mighty are above the law, and the people below it, when law is for lawyers, and not for the people, the rule of law, so necessary to a society, falls.

As was said, the charge of treason is never lightly levied. It must only be charged with the greatest of deliberation, not in the heat of the moment. What may appear treasonous in a moment, may be patriotic in another. However, patterns of abuse, committed across the periods of multiple legislatures, multiple executors, tends to indicate a pattern of usurpation that goes far deeper than accident or coincidence.

The purpose of government was never to subjugate the people, but only to serve them. The police force cannot help you be safe, that is in your own hands. When a government grasps beyond its reach, and usurps the powers of the people that they denied it, and denies them the exercise or the substance of the rights which were reserved to protect themselves from that usurpation, and creates a 'press' to deny others the freedom of the press, engages in the creation of monopoly for their own profit, and establishes the vote of the people in hands other than their own, their powers are null, void, and forfeit, due to the violation of the very contract with which that entity was created.

Our rights have once again become tools in the hands of enterprising speculators, interested more in power and money than in what is good for the nation. We did not cede the states lands for collateral for debts, but for something to be treasured for all into perpetuity, and by the attempt at collateralization of those lands, they have forfeited the loan. We did not cede our bodies, our lives, and our savings to their hands, but they attempt to seize them anyway to make further debt for us.

We are taxed in all things, in birth, in work, in play, in food, in drink, in movement, in life, and when we die for having the temerity of reducing their tax base.

No government may rule save by the consent of the governed... and no longer may we consent. The charges of high treason are those that make war against the United States... and the greatest symbol of the United States is not the flag, it is the Constitution. That founding document, that foundation, is the basis upon all powers, and the very existence of the Federal Government reside. The military itself serves at our pleasure, and in support of that constitution. If our representatives, our senators, our executive branch, and our supreme court have operated, and continue to operate in the support of attacking the purposes, intent, and nature of that constitution, then they have forfeited the high powers therein contained, and are not a legitimate government, of, by, and for the people. By assailing our liberty, assailing our rights guaranteed by that constitution, the powers fall back in our own hands, to restore that constitution to its proper place.

We hereby, by the rights, powers, privileges, and immunities present as citizens of the Several States, proclaim and document the abuses and usurpations of the government of those states, and declare it to be a void government, and to have ceased its operation, ceased its legitimate powers, and take those powers back to the states and the people themselves. We charge the ladies and gentlemen of the house, the senate, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court, with High Treason, making war not only against their own people, but against the constitution.



Whereas: Our Government engages in monopoly, destructive to the purposes of a free society.
Whereas: They support those monopolies by government action, in violation of the prohibition against laws directed to benefit or deny any individual or group.
Whereas: They deliberately create ex post facto legislation to attack and criminalize the exercise of rights.
Whereas: They deny the right to self-protect due to the creation of felonies, and the broaden the meaning thereof, even while denying the right to police protection.
Whereas: They delegate the sovereignty of the nation to foreign bodies where the people have no representation, nor means of recourse or recall, in violation of the charter of the Constitution.
Whereas: They dilute the checks and balances so necessary for a free people, and limited government.
Representation and the vote is left in the hands of enterprising companies, that are connected directly with the very banks that are profiting off our labor, and offering us paper in return.
Whereas: They claim once again the power to engage in rendition, spiriting others away to nations inimical to their freedom and rights, for confession by torture.
Whereas: They claim the power to levy the law by preference, rather than by law, engaging only those who would be profitable for the very monopolies that they have established to maintain the prison system.
Whereas: They have eliminated the writ of habeas corpus for those who are, under the sole opinion of the executive branch, enemies of the United States.
Whereas: They have engaged the troops, levied for our protection, against us in the excuse of protection.
Whereas: They have engaged us in prisons, in jails, to further their goal of the centralization of power.
Whereas: They have encircled us with laws of their own devising, while denying laws both necessary and proper for the control and limitation of the government.
Whereas: They have engaged in spying upon the private citizens of the Several States, and engaged in assaults without warrant, abuses against persons and property without trial, and the severance of the rights of the people without trial.
Whereas: They have subverted the role of the judge, the role of the jury, and left them subservient to the role of the prosecutor.
Whereas: They allow the searches of our computers, our words, our thoughts, without permission or warrant, our conversations and meetings.
Whereas: They allow and establish new departments and new laws over us, with further punishments.
Whereas: They allow and establish prisons, creating the largest prison system on the planet, without any chance of reintegration.
Whereas: They allow the corporations within these prison systems to sell the labor, at great profit, of these prisoners.

Whereas: They deny the freedom of the press, in favor of the freedom of 'the Press' which they have firmly under their control.
Whereas: They deny the rights of the people to be their own investigators of the news, and spreaders of the news, in favor of that monopoly.
Whereas: The federal government has assumed police powers specifically denied by that constitution.
Whereas: They have engaged mechanisms of tyranny, building prisons and relocation centers, prohibited under the constitution.
Whereas: They have seized lands under the guise of preservation, in order to use them as collateral for further loans, again in violation of that constitution.
Whereas: They have repeatedly, and with utter ignorance and malice, attributed information that has no attribution, control, verifiability, or repeatability to back up their laws.
Whereas: They cede control of our territorial waters, of our borders, and remove rights within the states themselves, while failing to protect those borders from those who would criminally cross them.
Whereas: They bring forth further debts, to bind and rivet upon us, and our posterity slavery, when their powers were dedicated to preserve liberty.
Whereas: They allow searches and seizures without warrant.
Whereas: They allow the seizure of property under 'forfeiture', enriching the enforcement agency, who resells them, without the judgment of a court of law.
Whereas: They establish taxes, not for the benefit of the nation, but the benefit of their friends and corporations, and of nations outside the United States with purposes inimical to our own.

Whereas: Affirming the truth of all of the above, by our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, by our oaths bound to the Constitution and its defense, by our rights and powers vested in humanity itself, and those which that government agreed never to touch, lest it be dissolved as a tyrant: We demand the return to the republican form of government, guaranteed by the constitution under which all rights are preserved for all men. We demand the unambiguous return of the common law to the courts, the abolishment of laws written without a vote, without reading the law, and written in ambiguous language that binds the courts, and the people without recourse. We demand the recall of the lands loaned to the federal government for preservation, for voiding the contract of that preservation. We demand the Governors of the several states recall the military levied from the bodies of the several states in order to return their control to those states which made them up, for the common defense and for the defense of those states against a lawless Federal government which has attempted to usurp those powers. We demand the return of the properties of the several states to those bodies, and the return of all arms and ordinance levied from them to the states armories and to the people themselves. We demand that the unlawful, and illegitimate government that has forgotten its place, its duties, and its limits must step down, that new leadership may be brought to the fore in the spirit, limitations, and powers writ in the constitution, and that all bureaus, organizations, associations, corporations, and monopolies written by that federal government be dissolved in whole, and the groups operating them be placed under investigation for high treason against the Nation, the People, and most importantly that Constitution upon which all such powers are founded. We demand a return to the Constitutional Representative Republic. We demand all representation be recalled from the Federal Government, as the powers vested within that body are corrupt. We demand a return to the anonymous, personal ballot with open oversight of the counting and collection process, chain of custody of the ballots themselves, and storage of those ballots against usurpation by manipulation of their count.

By my sign and seal.

Tried By Conscience.

I hereby release this document into the public domain so long as it remains unaltered, for production, and immediate dissemination via whatever methods are appropriate, effective, and timely.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Us v. Them, the false paradigm.

We as human beings make many separations in our philosophy, separations between people and animals, between people and people, between races, between cultures. Some separations are valid, some are less so, but we seem driven mentally to create them.

There has always been the 'us' versus 'not-us' paradigm, the us versus them rooted in early history when everything was a potential enemy or potential prey that was not part of our family. We developed instinctive aversion responses to people who were different because of the potential for carried diseases, and many other things, creating the 'uncanny valley' of robotics, where a being that appears human if it gives improper responses is less human than a corpse.

There is a large amount of research involved in humanity, and the way we separate people from each other, from socioeconomic classes, to skin colors, to the injured, sick, and dying, to criminals. Perhaps the greatest, and easiest to understand separation is that of the criminal from the society... or is it? "Those people" are no less people, and save for the plea bargain or judgment of their peers would not be considered criminal. Without the laws themselves that ensnared them, they would not be considered criminals. It is an artificial barrier, created as much by politics, as by truth.

Often, we as people create such artificial barriers to control that which we cannot understand, and refuse to attempt to try. By labeling them criminals, we separate ourselves irrevocably from them, by making the label permanent. We don't have to care about them, we can dehumanize them. The truth is, we judge most harshly those who seem... most similar to ourselves, but separated by small things.

Like the Uncanny Valley, it is that very similarity, coupled with differences that causes us to reject. It was a survival response, designed to fight plagues and problems from a distance, but it carries over into today. Our very psyche rejects that 'those people' could be like us, so we dehumanize them further, rationalize this dehumanization, and engage in their destruction, often because they... are too much like us, yet different.

Is this rational? Is it sane? We judge others by what we see within ourselves, and dehumanize and depersonalize them, to vent our own self-hatred upon them in the 'scapegoating' response. This does not change our problems, but it provides a sociological 'relief valve' that seemingly offers catharsis until our own inner problems reassert themselves. For those most rejecting of others, most rejecting of differences, most rejecting of people, it says that they have many inner problems that they cannot face. This is not a judgment upon them, but a reality which is true within all of us.

The truth of the 'us versus them' paradigm is that it is untrue. It is, and has always been... us versus us.
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Monday, April 20, 2009

Unalienable rights, attainder, and law.

How often have you heard from a person, “They did (x) so they have no rights?” Have you really thought about this statement much? Have you said it?

Many people do not know what rights are, or what it means for a right to be inalienable. To explore this, we must look at the term itself. Inalienable and unalienable were used interchangeably by the founding fathers, and the root of the term is a contrary (in or un) and 'alienable', or to make foreign. The term 'alienation' was a specific legal term in property law, following the premise from the 1760s that rights themselves were matters of property. Alienation was a transfer of power over property between parties, as one person would 'alienate' the property from themselves, and the other would fully assume control.

If a man has 'unalienable' rights, and under the law cannot transfer, or have transferred by civil court those rights into the hands of another, what does this mean? Men (used as the term denoting all mankind, i.e. Homo Sapiens and all decendents) have specific rights to live, granted not by government fiat, but by the fact that they are alive. If a man cannot transfer those rights, and others cannot thus legally transfer them, then how can they lose those rights?

We live within a constitutional representative republic based in those rights, not a democracy. The purpose was to limit the power of the government against the people, and the power of the people against each other. It was designed to prevent the needs of the few being outweighed by the needs of the many, or the needs of the many being outweighed by the needs of the few. It did not matter if the tyrants were the majority, or the minority, the government or the people, tyranny was tyranny regardless of the form.

If your rights may be alienated and transferred to the government, who is to say if that government, or the people themselves, may be brought to a point where they deny you your right? Are you going to establish your right to protest the government when you are disarmed, and disabled, in a prison cell without the writ of habeas corpus, or even anyone other than the government knowing you are there?

Are you going to establish your innocence when they have the power to torture, and send you off for torture? Are you going to be remembered for your mewling confession under torture? The right to effective resistance is one of the fundamental rights. Society, itself, has means of dealing with the few who choose to commit crime, and harm others. The whole of society when armed in the cause of liberty can stop any force brought to bear against it. An unarmed society, however, when others who are less willing to abide by law maintain arms, is a society of victims; it is equally capable of being victimized from those outside of that society, as by its own government which believes should protect it.

Rights are for all classes. Attainder was the establishment of new classes by 'taint', that had easy identification, and removal of the rights of that class by edict, punishable by the courts of law without trial. Attainder (attaindere) literally means a taint. Should our government, or the people thereof be able to establish classes with 'less' rights than any other citizen outside of the bounds of the penitentiary or punishment by jury trial... what is to prevent them from other classes, including the class of the whole?

If your unalienable rights are alienated by writ.... so is control over your life, your body, and your beliefs. Think about it.


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Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Federal Government: Committing High Treason

A sad day comes to our nation, when our country is wracked with its own internal pains. When the very things we fought against in the foundation of our nation become commonplace in our lands, in our fortunes, in our very lives, become commonplace in our government, then we have ceased to have legitimate governance.

A high treason has been committed, and remains in its commission. Our government was not set out to take our rights, nor was it set out to establish laws to restrict those rights. It, in and of itself has no rights, only the powers laid down in its foundation, the Constitution.

The charges of high treason are never levied lightly, and it is with great sorrow that I must pronounce them. We, the People of the United states, are weary of the constant assault upon our persons, and upon our dignities, rights, liberties, immunities, and privileges. When, however, a constant train of abuses and usurpations comes upon the body of the people, it is their right, and their duty to levy the charges of treason where they rightly lay.

Governments are, and have always been founded in powers. Our government's powers were made solitary and limited for purposes that cannot be too strongly expressed. The actions of the British Government, the monopoly of the British East India Company, and the works of their agents in the Colonies were quite broad.

How then, have we returned to this place, when law itself is fallen, affects none save those who cannot defend themselves against it? When the high and mighty are above the law, and the people below it, when law is for lawyers, and not for the people, the rule of law, so necessary to a society, falls.

Our Government engages in monopoly, destructive to the purposes of a free society.
They support those monopolies by government action, in violation of the prohibition against laws directed to benefit or deny any individual or group.
They deliberately create ex post facto legislation to attack and criminalize the exercise of rights.
They deny the right to self-protect due to the creation of felonies, and the broaden the meaning thereof, even while denying the right to police protection.
They delegate the sovereignty of the nation to foreign bodies where the people have no representation, nor means of recourse or recall, in violation of the charter of the Constitution.
They dilute the checks and balances so necessary for a free people, and limited government.
Representation and the vote is left in the hands of enterprising companies, that are connected directly with the very banks that are profiting off our labor, and offering us paper in return.
They claim once again the power to engage in rendition, spiriting others away to nations inimical to their freedom and rights, for confession by torture.
They claim the power to levy the law by preference, rather than by law, engaging only those who would be profitable for the very monopolies that they have established to maintain the prison system.
They have eliminated the writ of habeas corpus for those who are, under the sole opinion of the executive branch, enemies of the United States.
They have engaged the troops, levied for our protection, against us in the excuse of protection.
They have engaged us in prisons, in jails, to further their goal of the centralization of power.
They have encircled us with laws of their own devising, while denying laws both necessary and proper for the control and limitation of the government.
They have engaged in spying upon the private citizens of the Several States, and engaged in assaults without warrant, abuses against persons and property without trial, and the severance of the rights of the people without trial.
They have subverted the role of the judge, the role of the jury, and left them subservient to the role of the prosecutor.
They deny the freedom of the press, in favor of the freedom of 'the Press' which they have firmly under their control.
They deny the rights of the people to be their own investigators of the news, and spreaders of the news, in favor of that monopoly.
They assume police powers specifically denied by that constitution.
They have engaged mechanisms of tyranny, building prisons and relocation centers, prohibited under the constitution.
They have seized lands under the guise of preservation, in order to use them as collateral for further loans, again in violation of that constitution.
They have repeatedly, and with utter ignorance and malice, attributed information that has no attribution, control, verifiability, or repeatability to back up their laws.
They cede control of our territorial waters, of our borders, and remove rights within the states themselves, while failing to protect those borders from those who would criminally cross them.
They bring forth further debts, to bind and rivet upon us, and our posterity slavery, when their powers were dedicated to preserve liberty.
They allow searches and seizures without warrant.
They allow the seizure of property under 'forfeiture', enriching the enforcement agency, who resells them, without the judgment of a court of law.
They establish taxes, not for the benefit of the nation, but the benefit of their friends and corporations, and of nations outside the United States with purposes inimical to our own.
They allow the searches of our computers, our words, our thoughts, without permission or warrant, our conversations and meetings.
They allow and establish new departments and new laws over us, with further punishments.
They allow and establish prisons, creating the largest prison system on the planet, without any chance of reintegration.
They allow the corporations within these prison systems to sell the labor, at great profit, of these prisoners.

As was said, the charge of treason is never lightly levied. It must only be charged with the greatest of deliberation, not in the heat of the moment. What may appear treasonous in a moment, may be patriotic in another. However, patterns of abuse, committed across the periods of multiple legislatures, multiple executors, tends to indicate a pattern of usurpation that goes far deeper than accident or coincidence.

The purpose of government was never to subjugate the people, but only to serve them. The police force cannot help you be safe, that is in your own hands. When a government grasps beyond its reach, and usurps the powers of the people that they denied it, and denies them the exercise or the substance of the rights which were reserved to protect themselves from that usurpation, and creates a 'press' to deny others the freedom of the press, engages in the creation of monopoly for their own profit, and establishes the vote of the people in hands other than their own, their powers are null, void, and forfeit, due to the violation of the very contract with which that entity was created.

Our rights have once again become tools in the hands of enterprising speculators, interested more in power and money than in what is good for the nation. We did not cede the states lands for collateral for debts, but for something to be treasured for all into perpetuity, and by the attempt at collateralization of those lands, they have forfeited the loan. We did not cede our bodies, our lives, and our savings to their hands, but they attempt to seize them anyway to make further debt for us.

We are taxed in all things, in birth, in work, in play, in food, in drink, in movement, in life... and in death. From the beginning to the end, those very taxes are used to further enslave us.

No government may rule save by the consent of the governed... and no longer may we consent. The charges of high treason are those that make war against the United States... and the greatest symbol of the United States is not the flag, it is the Constitution. That founding document, that foundation, is the basis upon all powers, and the very existence of the Federal Government reside. The military itself serves at our pleasure, and in support of that constitution. If our representatives, our senators, our executive branch, and our supreme court have operated, and continue to operate in the support of attacking the purposes, intent, and nature of that constitution, then they have forfeited the high powers therein contained, and are not a legitimate government, of, by, and for the people. By assailing our liberty, assailing our rights guaranteed by that constitution, the powers fall back in our own hands, to restore that constitution to its proper place.

I hereby, by the rights, powers, privileges, and immunities present as a citizen of the Several States, proclaim and document the abuses and usurpations of the government of those states, and declare it to be a void government, and to have ceased its operation, ceased its legitimate powers, and take those powers back to the states and the people themselves. I charge the ladies and gentlemen of the house, the senate, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court, with High Treason, making war not only against their own people, but against the constitution. May God have mercy upon all of our souls.
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The legitimate powers of government.

The legitimate powers of government, in a constitutional representative republic.

I have been looking with both appalled horror, and admiration at the resolution of the Georgia Senate, and considering the nature of law, and the constitution. The resolution itself, in large is correct, however, they have forgotten many things that are far more important.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

The first question this raises is what a republican form of government is... the Constitutional Republic is a system in which the powers of government are limited by constitutional contract, as well as limited by separation of powers into numerous branches. As a representational republic, the United States required several things.... not only to bind the branches of government against each other, but to bind the people themselves down from mischief which, well-meaning, would destroy their liberty and bind them over into tyranny for the emotions of a moment.

How do I support this? The Federalist papers, the very documents that 'sold' the republic, and the Constitution from which it was created, talk of the intent, the purpose, and the ultimate bounds of government.

The Federalist 51 (The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments , Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, February 8, 1788.) speaks of the necessity for balancing the departments, and having them capable of checking each other, but also speaks of something else... the necessity to bind the people themselves from voting away the rights of each other.

Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.

We are bound against tyranny, against our own impulses, our own fears, and more, our own best intentions. We are free in our liberties, our rights, our immunities. The first nine 'bill of rights' amendments were never all there were, they were simply the most likely to preserve that liberty which was at the forefront of the founding contract.

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.

A grave argument against that original bill of rights was within the Federalist 84:

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.
and more:

There remains but one other view of this matter to conclude the point. The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS. The several bills of rights in Great Britain form its Constitution, and conversely the constitution of each State is its bill of rights. And the proposed Constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the Union. Is it one object of a bill of rights to declare and specify the political privileges of the citizens in the structure and administration of the government? This is done in the most ample and precise manner in the plan of the convention; comprehending various precautions for the public security, which are not to be found in any of the State constitutions.

Within the body of the constitution itself, there are only two sections of restraint, one from the Federal government, and one from the states. If those powers were prohibited from the federal government, by noninclusion, and prohibition, where would this be?

Article 1, section 9.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

And the states? Their prohibitions go further.
Article 1, section 10
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.

If the former binds down the Federal government from all of the things written in the bill of rights... should not the latter do so far more securely?

Attainder is any deprivation of rights without the work of a court and jury process, created by excuse of a taint on an individual or group, including the group of the whole. When we engage in attainder, from writs of criminal registration to writs requiring identification to writs requiring giving up money or property on suspicion of future crimes, we are no longer a Constitutional Representative Republic. We have then become something far more dangerous and insidious, a tyranny. Does it matter that said tyranny is invoked in the realm of the constitution? If any class lacks the whole benefit, as well as the penalties of law, then the law itself is fallen.

If we can be imprisoned, not for crimes we commit, but for crimes we might commit, fined and numbered not for things which we do, but things we might do, we are already at the point of slavery. If we, as a people, can be taxed, not for our benefit, but for the benefit of others, and the benefit of extranationals that pay no taxes whatsoever, then we are slaves. If any human, from poorest to richest, must apply for permission to walk down the road, for permission to use their own property, their own funds, their own lives, for permission to marry, to have a family, to live, to travel, and even to leave and must apply for the permission to protect their property, family, home, and are denied the right to protection by the police corps... we are far, far worse than even slaves. We are things.. numbers in a database, statistics soon forgotten.

The greatest rights of all are the rights to express, to think, to assemble peaceably without a requirement for license, and to protect what is ours against all takers, including the Federal Government, and the State Government.

If the state government proposes to take those rights away, for any reason, for any person outside of a prison cell and the sentence of the court, then they, themselves are fallen. If they propose to use the army to enforce law... the union has already fallen.

Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community REQUIRE TIME to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time. Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all? Is it probable that it would be persevered in, and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body, which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses? Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man, discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties, in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.

The states at this point have NO existence outside the union itself. By secession, they have voided the entirety of their contract, and a new contract must be made with the people. A house divided against itself cannot stand... but a house where the rafters seek to crush the foundation cannot stand either. If the few seek to control the many, or the many the few via deprivation of rights... all will fall.

To make war against one's own government is treason... and higher treason by far when done by one's own legislature, or executive, including the federal government's legislature and executive. Tearing down the rights that were designed to protect against the incursions of that federal government, or the state government is an act of war, war against reason, war against liberty, and war against the people themselves.

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

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.
– Samuel Adams.

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
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Friday, April 10, 2009

The song of liberty.

The sounds of auld fighting men, echoes with the drums,
the fifing corps and drummer boys, across the years it comes,
and with the sound of reckoning, comes dancing cross the soil,
where the drummers marching stand... before their troops they toil...

The buglers and pipers too, martial in their march,
when bogs and glen, from hearth and home, beneath the blue sky's arch,
when moments wrought and caught inside, liberty does spawn,
then comes the army from the ground, inevitable as dawn.

The march of liberty is here, esprit in the corps,
and though too many fall today, yet will stir their corpse,
from the blood so fallen now, freedom rises 'gain,
for never we bought liberty, except through our own pain.

For when the dirge of tyranny, echoes from the land,
and dreams are ground to dust again, and lost within the sand,
When the tyrants reached their hands, outside their own scope,
the dreamers still did dare to dream, and reach out for their hope.

The sound of fighting men did swell, a hundred thousand strong,
for fighting for the liberty, could never lead them wrong,
when men sought to make them slaves, never could they yeild,
even though they might now die, forgotten in the field.

Forgot by others, days past, but remembered in the years,
in the blood that they had spilt, in their sundered tears,
but in the moments that they knew, they never yet did kneel,
for inside their souls they were bound, with liberty their seal.

When men do disappear, not for what they do,
but for what they say, believe, not for what is true,
then tyranny is at your door, and coming with a knife
you dare not wait for them to knock, they're here to take your life.

When attainder has its sway, or habeas corpus quits,
when the law is not the law, with retroactive bits,
when steals from one for other's profit, brings the taxes down,
then has come the tyrant's hand, to try to make a crown.

From the blood must rise, the song of liberty,
for from the soil and from the bone, man must yet be free,
and find a way to bind them down, from the tyrant's goal,
for no man must be a slave, for taxes or for toll.
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