When a man crosses his Rubicon, and the battles are inevitable, when a man looks into his heart and realizes the dangers that lie in believing, but still chooses to believe, that time, that moment, changes something in him.
The battle will be long, but win or lose, worth it.
I salute you all, of whom I have grown so proud.
Would that I had years to spend with the future, with learning and speaking with each of you, but that is not to be. Each moment of our lives, we sit, and wait, but for what do we wait? Do we wait for a savior to come, to rescue each of us? Is it not said that God helps those who help themselves?
I may not be able to communicate for quite some time. The die, after all, is cast, the game begun, for better, or for worse, for truth or ill. The challenge must be thrown down to achieve a better tomorrow. It is not done in haste, and never could be, but to be true to myself, I could never turn my back on this challenge, not when it has been presented me in such trappings.
I love my nation, my fellow citizens, too much to turn my back on the suffering there.
And so the die is cast... and for better or worse, the game will be played, the Rubicon crossed, and I cannot look back.
People may ask what I mean by saying things such as this, but the law must be tried. There are laws, and there are foundations to law. When the law expands outwards from its foundations, beyond the scope for which it was proposed, the law itself is doomed to fall. It is the duty of men, especially men of conviction and men of conscience, to try the law in the venues available to them, afore more precipitous action is taken. It is my intent, my duty, and my obligation to break the law, in order to uphold the more foundational law.
The doctrine of stare decisis is a curious thing, once a belief that the doctrine must not always be relied upon, but only where based from the foundational principles, to become 'settled law' which must not be examined today. However, today I intend to unsettle the law, to rip up the flagstones and determine if the foundation is still sound.
I intend to break a law, a federal law, and a state law that cannot exist under the constitution. In the Idaho State Constitution, as in many constitutions within the States, there are certain inalienable rights. These rights are supported by others, and by specific limitations placed not only upon the governments, but upon the people. The Constitution states that the federal government must guarantee a republican form of government to the states. This republican form of government was guaranteed to attempt to preserve the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, and to guard that great and arduous task, we preserved the preexisting right to keep and bear arms, under the Magna Carta, and the rights under the writs of William and Mary of Orange.
These rights were enshrined long before the constitution to all, regardless of race, of class, and intended to end tyranny. Slavery itself was in debate, as the end goal of tyranny itself.
If you have rights, inalienable rights, and you are denied the exercise of those rights, do you still have them?
There is a phrase written in many state constitutions, in varying forms, and with varying measures, it reads as: . All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights--among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.
It occurs in varying forms, in one case stating the fruits of their labors, in another happiness, or in another going so far as to state the right to keep and bear arms as being directly reserved to the people as an inalienable right.
Such it was considered, after all, in the beginning, and that right to self-defense even got the soldiers in Rowe's Wharf's massacre an innocent verdict, for reasons of self-defense.
The trials of Zenger, Throckmorton, and Bushell are nearly forgotten now, but they also bear a strong and striking purpose in the foundation of the nation. They were talked about as to the nature of the jury, and the very nature of sedition. The greatest defense against sedition is the truth, as it was with Zenger, and Throckmorton.
And the truth is that the American People, and their congressmen and senators, their executives and judges, have for decades, nearly a century, been lied to.
The Federalist Papers are not merely one view of the constitution, they were the view of the constitution by the founders of the constitution, those very federalists, and in response to strong attacks by the antifederalists. The antifederalists brought up opposition to the constitutional plan, problems that may lie within aspects of the plan, and flaws that were perceived, the federalists explained how the plan itself was intended to work to prevent such problems.
They are an explanation of the purpose, the intent, and the meaning of the Constitution itself.
Until a man is willing to stand up for his rights, they are not rights. Until he is willing to insist upon them, they cannot be so called. Until he is willing to exercise them in his own defense, no matter what the law may say, they do not exist.
Men fear the government, but so too the government fears its citizens. Why else would there be so active, so prominent, an attempt to remove the rights of the citizens that were enshrined for their own defense?
And not just defense against the 'Indians' or against each other, but against tyranny from all sources?
If tyranny is allowed to exist, men will ever be only tyrants or slaves. When the law can levy its burden upon one man more heavily than another, or act upon the rights of a group, it can be used to the advantage of others, and the detriment of any group.
So I break the law to sustain the law. I have accepted in full that burden, and do so actively, knowingly, and with the only remorse being for the necessity.
When a nation has fallen so far that the only recourses are trying the law upon your own person, or rebellion, where do we stand?
Give me six lines written by the most honourable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.— Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642)
— Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.– 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.
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
All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.– Samuel Adams
Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.– Samuel Adams
Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety– John Quincy Adamsto us, as in our own hands?– Patrick Henry
The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.
The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.– John Locke
[F]or nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 pounds that way.– John Locke
There is no further recourse through the voting booth. False and designing men have arranged to make those electronic polls far more easy to rig than even paper ballots, or votes counted 'in secret' behind a screen by the touch of a hand upon another. There is no oversight, and no recourse there. Indeed, the courts themselves may no longer be a recourse. As of this moment men can be dragged from the streets, arrested, and made to disappear, for supposed crimes, dragged beyond the walls of the nation, tortured into compliance and tried for the crimes they 'admit to' to end the torture.
And if they happen to die, it was for the good of the nation.
From your past you'll see the patterns that are coming to your future, in the present. Courage, patriotism, it's all well and good when it's just ideals, but so few are willing to stand up to the law, to stand up for things simply because.. it is the right thing to do. They worry about family, selves, jail time. But injustice is injustice, and I cannot remain free so long as an injust act remains. No man can be free that does not equally strive for the freedom of others. I'd considered running away, leaving this nation and its laws behind, but I cannot be so cowardly, after all, it is rank and arrant cowardice to flee when others make war against you.
Usurpation of the rule of law, destruction of its level and equity, decimation of the court and judicial systems, all are symptoms of the real problem. We do not, many of us, know our rights, or our limitations in a republic. The truth is the greatest power is in us ourselves. We are the masters of our future, so long as we do not deny that right to self-mastery to any other. The rulers forget that the greatest duty is to the people, not to their own power base or the lobbyists or anything else. The duty of the Representatives are to their constituents, and the duty of the senate is to the states, and if they fail at that duty, then they must be removed, and tried. Every ruler is bound in mastery to his people he rules. He is made a servant in chains of propriety, and shackles of service... as Cincinnatus once said, the more I lead, the more I serve.
When you look out the window, you dont' see the real tyranny, it lies hidden. They come in the night, the nacht und nebel, the night and fog. They take away people and they are never heard from again, nor seen, nor spoken of. It is as though they no longer exist.
Such placement of the rule of law under the thumb of the civil magistrate, the legislator, or the executive is naught but treason. Does it matter what they call it, if your right to a fair and speedy trial is gone, your right to a public hearing, gone, your right to hear the accusations against you... gone? If they refuse under national security to reveal the charges and evidence against you, can you defend yourself?
If the law does not apply equally, to kings and emperors as well as serfs and prisoners, if it levies its load more firmly upon the back of any one man than any other, society suffers, bleeds, and dies.
I've applied for help from the ACLU, from the Rutherford Institute, from the Cato institute. I have no money for attorneys, nor means by which to fight this through a civil suit. I have little enough of anything, and if the only asset I have is my life, then that is the asset I shall spend. I've grown to love life again, but what they are offering is not life... it is a never-ending slavery, torture, and subjugation.
Think about this... what happens when a man cannot leave his state without the rules changing, and when he arrives to a new state... they can change the punishment as they see fit, without ever seeing the evidence, the case, the punishment, the crime, or even the judge and jury's notes? Is that just? Can it not be extended however to regulate any other crime, and are you innocent of all crimes? I'm quite certain in that volume of federal codes there is some felony of which you are guilty... and therefore your rights are as empty as my own.
But the law must be tried, before it is set aside to repair and restore the constitution. Failure in this measure is not an option. The law must be tried to the best knowledge of man, and wholly and solely on constitutional issues. No defense attorney in the world is willing to do such.
As of this moment, this is my last recourse.
And if this recourse fails, the final recourse, the one to be avoided at all costs, save when there is no other occurs. Restoration of that constitution by rebellion.
How much more precious than a pence is your life, and rights? How much more valuable can it be than the very things that allow you to be free, that maintain that freedom? Indeed, at this date I cannot guarantee, as I have said, that I shall not simply disappear, a victim of extraordinary rendition. However, if such happens, the recourse is ended.
Under the law, in Idaho, I no longer have a recourse for the restoration of rights, and therefore, the only recourse I have is to challenge the law upon my own body.
May God have mercy upon my soul, and upon those who still yet refuse to help me.
"To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.
– William Blackstone
-- John of Salisbury: Policratus
"It is not only permitted, but it is also equitable and just to slay tyrants. For he who receives the sword deserves to perish by the sword.But 'receives' is to be understood to pertain to he who has rashly usurped that which is not his, now he who receives what he uses from the power of God. He who receives power from God serves the laws and is the slave of justice and right. He who usurps power suppresses justice and places the laws beneath his will. Therefore, justice is deservedly armed against those who disarm the law, and the public power treats harshly those who endeavour to put aside the public hand. And, although there are many forms of high treason, none is of them is so serious as that which is executed against the body of justice itself. Tyranny is, therefore, not only a public crime, but if this can happen, it is more than public. For if all prosecutors may be allowed in the case of high treason, how much more are they allowed when there is oppression of laws which should themselves command emperors? Surely no one will avenge a public enemy, and whoever does not prosecute him transgresses against himself and against the whole body of the earthly republic."
"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
Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of "emergency". It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And "emergency" became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains. — Herbert Hoover.
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 ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
– Samuel Adams
Ye darkeners of counsel, who would make the property, lives, and religion of millions depend on the evasive interpretations of musty parchments; who would send us to antiquated charters of uncertain and contradictory meaning, to prove that the present generation are not bound to be victims to cruel and unforgiving despotism,--tell us whether our pious and generous ancestors bequeathed to us the miserable privilege of having the rewards of our honesty, industry, the fruits of those fields which they purchased and bled for, wrested from us at the will of men over whom we have no check. Did they contract for us that, with folded arms, we should expect that justice and mercy from brutal and inflamed invaders which have been denied to our supplications at the foot of the throne? Were we to hear our character as a people ridiculed with indifference? Did they promise for us that our meekness and patience should be insulted, our coasts harassed, our towns demolished and plundered, and our wives and offspring exposed to nakedness, hunger, and death, without our feeling the resentment of men, and exerting those powers of self-preservation which God has given us?
-- Samuel Adams, August 1, 1776
Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would take the authority to make your child a slave simply because you had nourished him in his infancy?
It is a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed; that demands as a reward for the defense of our property a surrender of those inestimable privileges to the arbitrary will of vindictive tyrants, which alone gives value to that very property.
-- Samuel Adams, August 1, 1776
When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin, and render us easier victims to tyranny. Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if peradventure any should yet remain among us! —remember that a Warren and Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled bodies of our countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood, and hunt us from the face of the earth? If we 1ove wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude, than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
-- Samuel Adams, August 1, 1776
Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, "Come, come, we shall be friends again, for all this." But examine the passions and feelings of mankind, Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense.
This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some fixed object. It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by delay and timidity. The present winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious and useful.
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