What I'm doing, and why

Ladies and gentlemen of the nation, people of all races, colors, sects, religions, and ideals. This morning, I go forth to do the right thing, because it is the right thing. The right thing is never easy to do, nor is it ever simple to contemplate, particularly in matters where the government can take that liberty. But it is still the right thing to do, and conscience compels me to do it.

We talk in this nation glowingly of liberty and rights, but we have forgotten their foundation. We speak of things that we know little of, like parrots. There were four major rights in the beginning, from which all other rights flowed... the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to property, together with the ability to defend all of the above.

No person was free unless he had all of those things. We are born free, we were guaranteed to live free. In many constitution these rights are enshrined, for instance, in the Idaho Constitution, Article 1, Section 1.Inalienable rights of man. All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property; pursuing happiness and securing safety.

Inalienable means that we have no right to transfer it, control it, regulate it, register it. We have no power to allow the government to control it, nor does the government have the legitimate authority to do so.

I believe in the rights of all people, and my studies of the Constitution, and of the Bill of Rights, the Federalist and Antifederalist papers both, the continental congress, and the Declaration of Independence and the British Common Law upon which it was founded all point to the same thing.

We are not a democracy, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. All of the founding papers spoke of true democracy as the destroyer of freedom. We are a constitutional representative republic, with all that entails. As a republic, we have the voice of the people, the vote, to speak to our representative s. If those representative s fail to represent us, we have the right to remove them by the vote. If that system of voting is subverted, there is another right, the second amendment having been enshrined so all able-bodied persons capable of bearing arms could not only be the voice of their own discontent, but the arm to restrain the government from precipitate action.

Together with the great powers entrusted to the government, were specific guarantees. The greatest of these for liberty were the right to keep and bear, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from establishing a religion or religious obligation upon the people, and freedom from the people themselves removing or altering the rights of themselves, or others within the republic.

In any free nation the right to have, exercise, and express civil rights is the same as the right to have, exercise, and express religious rights. The government cannot license the exercise of a civil right, cannot contain it or constrain it, else they are exercising the powers of ownership that were reserved to the people themselves.

Those very powers of ownership, the powers to control those rights, belong in the hands of the people, as a rightful safeguard against tyranny.

Across the centuries, much has been lost, and the excuse that the political right lies in the majority has been advanced, and that the majority's rights exceed that of the minority, but think about it a moment. if the majority's view of 'right' is the only view of right and wrong, is it not within the power of the majority to enslave and to despoil the minority, if they believed that such would advantage them? Could they not then winnow their ranks until no person save the very few were parts of those in power? Is this not tyranny, the bellum omnia in omnia spoken of by the ancients, the war of all against all?

Is it not a more frightful means of destruction of all the constitution stood for, freedom, and liberty, for ourselves and our posterity?

Hence the great gift our nation gave to us, the republican principle. No law could levy itself unequally upon any. If there were any advantage conferred by law, that advantage must be enjoyed by all. If the law conferred any penalty, the penalty must be borne by all.

Otherwise, what happens? False and designing men will make mock of the constitution, and enable laws, to separate the society, one part against another, to enflame them in disputes, to steal property from one and give it to another, and to place under the people under the heel of the law, that very law which should rightfully serve the legitimate interests of the people, and restrain their baser impulses.

It is law that keeps us safe, and free. Without law there is no freedom, for in that state of anarchy, the stronger may easily oppress the weaker, until it fractures and becomes the slaves of those stronger yet. It is in this interest that the republican principle was created, the separation of powers, the checks and balances, and the powers of the people themselves being limited to laws that affect all equally.

It is in that interest that I challenge the Sex Offender Registry. For the law to stand, the rule of law must be maintained and preserved. If that rule of law has fallen, and there is no recourse to laws that are void under the constitution, if there is no right to safety, to preservation of liberty and property, to life itself, then the law has turned itself against the people for whom it was created.

I try the law to prove a far more important law.

Because these rights were preserved to ourselves and our posterity, and that government enshrined that liberty in its foundational documents, our nation was in error from the beginning. No slaves could be kept under that principle. No discrimination by means of law could be legal. No status could be made that separated one part of the people from the other, save through the criminal courts, for the duration of the just sentence, which could not thereafter be altered or redefined, save for a new crime.

No crimes could be levied against a free citizen, save for both the actus and the mens rea, the criminal act, and the criminal mind. No act can be criminal that is within the rights, and preserves the rights of others. No act can assume, nor create any 'greater rights' in any group of citizens than another.

It is the purpose of the courts to dispense justice, and justice can never be just if the nation can alter that judgement to increase the penalty, and the removal of rights is a removal of a property that has no assignable monetary value.

It is necessary in the rule of law for there to be separations from society, when society has been wronged. Indeed, the courts themselves were created to judge the wounds to society, not to the individual victim. Equally, the protection the police assign is to the society, not to the victim. We have no individual right to police protection, nor can we sue the police, even for knowing and deliberate failure to protect, and even.. if the police or law denies you the ability to protect yourself.

At that point, there is no protection, no ability to seek safety, to preserve life or liberty, and any such law must fall.

More heinous yet, however, is a law that simultaneously not only denies the rights of self-protection, but also holds up a citizen or class of citizens to public scrutiny as monsters, simultaneously denying them, and the states, the inherent right to justice.

Justice is balanced, justice is based in truth, and not in emotion. It must consider both the wound to the society, and the nature of the perpetrated act, balancing law with reasonableness and right.

The registry fails this test. Upon the registry, you can be sentenced to a single year, and then spend the rest of your life as a registrant. Even if you are removed from the registry, or even given a full pardon, which by the law eliminated the onus of the crime, moving to another state, for any reason, suddenly somehow reinstates it, and allows the new state to determine what rights you are denied. We are tried, not for the acts we do, but for the acts we may, or may not commit. We are tried, not for a criminal mind, and a criminal act, but tried for the fear which people view us due to the status that the government has imposed upon us, without our assent, calling it a civil matter.

Consider this however. No civil matter can be made, save with consent. If there is coercion involved, there is not consent. If there is fraud involved, in either party, there is not consent. If the person is not free to deny consent, then there is not consent. This is contrary, as well, to the rule of law.

Further, no civil matter could provide any criminal penalty, and simply separating and creating a criminal act for a failure to consent to a civil matter is not within the civil law either. It is a violation of both the original, fundamental contracts with which our states, and our nation was founded, but also of justice itself.

If a law denies the rights of life, liberty, property, and the ability to defend them, applies to only a small group, gives them disadvantages that can be altered at any time, at a whim, without that group's permission or review, then it can never be just. It is only a tool of punishment, and one used only by the greatest tyrants in history.

That is why I go before the court of law. That is why this law must be tried, and why this law must fall. If this law is not tried, and does not fall, there is no longer recourse, no longer a republic, and it is the duty of all of mankind, all patriots, all citizens, to respond to the danger and return the law to its proper place, as a servant of man, and not as a tyrant, by whatever means necessary, from the trial of the law upon a man's own body, or trial of the law by the right of restoring it the service of mankind, by the force of arms.

As is, was, and will remain your right.

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