Mr. Rose has produced a brilliant video on how the Constitution enables the legalized theft of your time and wealth,  The former especially if you withhold the latter. -BB

DI

See:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/900.html

This extractive power is UNLIMITED in the original document.  By the tenth anniversary of the ratification of this regrettable document, the taxes levied on excises, land, homes, slaves and document was well under way as established law.  Later to be rubber stamped by the “independent” Federal judiciary.

I urge you not to take my word for it nor that of the eminent Mr. Rose.  Read the Constitution.  Read the Anti-Federalist papers.  Read the Articles of Confederation.  Ignore anything you see on the television; as a matter of fact, cut off your cable or satellite immediately.

Here is my challenge to every one of my readers:  prove me wrong.  Show me that the Constitution lost its way and it was originally a blueprint for limited government.  Good luck, you will need it.

And as a a corollary to this investigation, answer this innocent question: what government in Western history has ever limited its power and grown smaller and weaker over time?

Government is never the solution, it is always the problem.  -BB

“…Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better– This is a most valuable, — a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world…”

-Abraham Lincoln 1848

We Have a Dream...

There’s been a stubborn paradox historically. It stands to reason that all nations as they perish and evolve from the ashes over time through their lifecycles are usually born out of separation and independence as secession movements to form their own aggregate nation-states.  Whether the bifurcation of the Roman Empire or the hundreds of other polities born of divorce, the paradox is that nation-states in their death throes (self-awareness of this is not always evident, witness the Soviet death in 1989) jealously and viciously fight the ability of subsidiary parts of their polity to have a peaceful divorce historically.  This has usually ended in bloodshed or enmity that has lasted for generations.  The states which fight the most vociferously have the most to lose.  In the case of these united States, the tax farmers in DC have the most lucrative protection racket ever devised in mankind’s history.  In addition to the tax revenues, they have ingeniously engineered a “fiscal debt” system which allows them to borrow enormous amounts of money with no intention of ever paying down the principle and servicing the deficit with a fiat currency largely “manufactured” out of thin air.  Its demise is economically imminent.

It appears the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that the 2008 secession of Kosovo from Serbia was perfectly justifiable. It was not a violation of any existing international law. While I think that the Serbians were certainly abused and maligned in the late 1990s during our unjustified and violent incursions against them by both the US and NATO, it provides a salutary lesson in independence and secession for all those who desire this watching from around the globe.  Jason Ditz wrote:

ICJ President Owada Hisashi declared that there was no part of international law that was meant to be a “prohibition on declarations of independence.” Serbia had refused to recognize the secession, as had a number of other nations with prospective separatist movements.

Though Kosovo’s declaration of independence is comparatively recent, the nation has been separated from Serbia in practice since 1999, and continues to be occupied by NATO troops to this day, though the exact purpose of the occupation at this point remains unclear at best.

The nonbinding opinion, passed in a 10 to 4 vote by court judges, sets the stage for Kosovo to renew its appeals for further international recognition. The tiny Balkan country has been recognized by 69 countries, including the United States and most European Union nations. It needs 100 for full statehood. I find it bureaucratically obnoxious that you would need 100 other nations to recognize you from a diplomatic and economic perspective in order to grant legitimate statehood in the international arena.  It appears to be an arbitrary standard cooked up by the worthies at the United Nations (UN).

The interesting thing about international law and international relations is that it is essentially a state of anarchy in which there are neither provisos nor organizations in place which would provide for the force or threat of force to compel nation-states to behave in a certain fashion.  Of further interest in this “state of anarchy” is the compelling success of voluntary agreements in stopping warfare between these states.  Certainly a well for further inquiry.

I don’t like the United Nations. I don’t like what they represent as an international cheerleading squad for collectivist despotism and hypocrisy around the globe. I don’t like what they do and I regret their presence on our soil. I don’t like the amount of money that we spend on them nor do I like what the International Court of Justice does in The Hague.

But beggars can’t be choosers.  I have spoken at length before about the absolute necessity for secession and devolution in these united States as a solution to the present problems that we have which originate with the Constitution in these united States.

I would suggest that this ruling be used as yet another intellectual bulwark to make the substantive case for the eventual breakup of these united States. This country is a nation birthed in secession from the United Kingdom in 1775 and the issuance of the Declaration of Independence shortly thereafter.  I repeat, we are a nation birthed in secession.

In 1860, 11 states seceded from the union at the time because of grievances and disagreements which led to this divorce. This led to a five-year conflict in which everything the nation was allegedly designed to do was turned on its head and Lincoln put us on the plantation. In the run-up to the war of northern aggression in 1860, a number of amendments were offered before the Congress to prohibit states from leaving the union. Ironically, it was Lincoln in 1848 that made his famous quote in which he said that if a state or states find themselves dissatisfied with the union and let them go in peace. 12 years later Lincoln and the radical Republicans have started to change their tune after the War of Northern Aggression and regrettable military occupation after, secession fell out of favor as an option to change the way things were evolving in these united States. There were attempts between the founding of the Republic and the Second American Revolution 1860 in which even northern states had floated the idea of secession.  Our beloved Supremes had the following to say in Texas v. White:

…the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their governments, is as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States. When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States. (74 U.S. at 725-6)

A nice accompaniment to Dred Scott in the annals of bad law. There is an odd confluence between the two in the overarching concept of owning other humans. The Court is saying that one does not need to explicitly ban secession when the entirety of the Constitution blatantly presumes the perpetuity of states in the Union.  This is not my understanding but what permeates the bench as THE interpretation.  It appears that this put the secession bug to bed (as far as our Federal overseers are concerned) so the arguments which will emanate from the ICJ decision is what relevance will this law have to US decisions.  This does not make these decisions correct, of course.  The threat of the new Small Arms Control Treaty is very real because of the unfortunate parity embraced in the Constitution for the Senate treatment of its impact on US law.  Bad laws were meant to be broken.

I would draw your attention to a significant observation from the Paris Treaty which accorded the seceding states their liberation from the United Kingdom, to wit:

Article I of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

The treaty EXPRESSLY acknowledges each colony as a sovereign state, and relinquishes Britain’s claim over it. There is no question of Great Britain’s intention.  In comparison, the great coup of 1787 began with the sovereign states and made the Constitution– not the other way around. So the states would each remain sovereign unto itself– unless they similarly made a clear and express declaration to transfer their sovereignty to another nation, and relinquish their own. (Thanks, Brad Anderson)

One can see how quickly the “Perpetual Union” in the Articles of Confederation was dispensed with during the Constitutional coup in 1787-91 with the mere flourish of a pen.

It appears that the International Court of Justice ruling on secession is going to have long-term second and third order effects which I don’t think they’ve taken a good measure of. While secession in third world and developing countries has been a rather frequent phenomenon, this has not been the case in the Western nations in the developed world. What we’re seeing now is schisms starting to develop within these sophisticated Western states to include Europe, Canada and these United States

In Canada, plenty of dissatisfaction is evident in Western Canada versus the eastern provinces. Québec still seeks its own status as a sovereign and independent nation. There is a Basque territory in the northeastern corner of Spain which has been given virtual sovereignty and secession privileges without formal secession because the Spanish have given up on putting the Basques under their boot. In these united States, secession is no longer a four letter word in the Western states. The notion has given to large popular appeal among broad sections of the population. I would not be surprised if this international ruling acts as an accelerator in the movement to finally break apart these united States.

Secession is not treason; treason is what the convened Executive and Congress do every day in DC.  However the political advocates of secession may view the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, this is a critical decision simply because of the diplomatic necessity of the recognition process.  If the secession movement is to be taken seriously as an alternative in an actual political agenda, the recognition of international law and its importance on the success of secessionist movements must be acknowledged immediately. The ICJ ruling should be hailed loud and clear in many quarters especially in the inland Western state in America as yet another brick in the wall.

Copyright © 2010 by hezekiahwyman.com

Articles of Confederation

Ron Holland and I met at Freedom Fest 2010.  He was the moderator in the debate I had with Dr. Daniel Walker Howe. He and I got on famously and found that we had a lot in common as far as our perspectives on liberty and freedom and notably both the First and Second American Revolutions. He penned an interesting and well-crafted essay on LewRockwell today called Back to the Articles!

Here is an excerpt:

Finally, two key points about this proposal need to be discussed. First, it isn’t necessary for all 50 states to go through the state convention process and obtain the necessary majority support to secede from the federal government and then join a restored Articles of Confederation. In fact, it may not be necessary for even one state to actually secede from the current Washington-led forced political union.

Just the birth of a strong “Back to the Articles” movement and the creation of state independence groups with the avowed intention of repudiating the massive national debts placed on this and future generations by political and monetary elites against the will of the people could solve the coming debt and dollar problems. The threat of state independence and debt repudiation together with a new debt-free Articles of Confederation national government could be enough to force Washington and Congress to control the debt and dramatically cut spending themselves.

The other alternative is our efforts will frighten foreign treasury debt holders enough to force Washington to behave responsibly or else they dump the dollar and the debt now rather than after our government has taken our wealth and savings to delay a run on the treasury debt.

Second, a Back to the Articles movement is not necessarily a move to the right or the left in American politics. For example, my friend Tom Naylor in Vermont is leading a Vermont independence movement which is a small is beautiful, progressive and left-leaning movement quite suited to the liberal views of Vermont, while next door, “Live Free Or Die” New Hampshire has the libertarian Free State Project.

He also went on to mention Tom Wood’s excellent book, Nullification, which I commend to everyone out there who is presently reading this. While Tom contends that this is well within the Constitutional framework to use nullification and makes a very compelling case for how it has been used in the past for very virtuous and meritorious reasons and not simply the Progressives’ contention for ensuring that slavery was in place and other such inanities.  BTW, see Tom’s brilliant guerilla marketing for the book here.

I would submit to you that nullification works just as well in an extra-constitutional framework; a framework that dismisses the Constitution as the legal authority of these United States and evolves beyond the present constraints that favor the Leviathan state. I would like to discuss briefly a word that has no descriptive value whatsoever – unconstitutional. I would suggest that unconstitutional has no meaning whatsoever because as we have discovered under the Leviathan state in Mordor on the Potomac there is no limit on governance and the reach of the state. There is no limit on what the state can do to individual Americans. The Constitution was designed with this very notion in mind. The Constitution was designed under Hamilton’s machinations to give the central government, a national government, the ability to have unlimited extractive power of individuals living within the respective states. From the beginning, the document was designed to make all the states mere political subsidiaries of the central government. We see in the decade following the adoption of ratification of the Constitution in 1791 taxes levied on homes, land, slaves, stamps, documents and the list goes on and on. In 1794, the central government is pursuing tax invaders in Pennsylvania with military force. Later in that fetid decade, the Adams administration begins a vicious campaign against any criticisms of the Federalist hegemony in central government in a concerted effort to shut down through force newspapers unfavorable to the expanding tentacles of the Leviathan which had been created.

Again and again, and we hear the pathetic cries from the usual suspects that if we would only go back to the original Constitution all things would be set right. I have heard this worthless admonition at every Tea Party I attend or every convention I go to even those with a libertarian bent.  I am here to tell you we have arrived at the very juncture which was designed in the original Constitution. Since that first decade, a number of Americans have become extremely concerned at the exponential expansion of the state and the concomitant shrinkage of freedom and liberty. The worst rhetorical disservice the freedom movement has done to itself is to embrace, enshrine and idolize a document which sought to yoke them in the first place.

All governments from time immemorial have had one purpose and one purpose only – to yoke the unfortunates caught within their geographical boundaries and farm them as if they were cattle through the forced proceeds of taxation and associated regulations to vertically and horizontally control atomistic human transactions at the most basic level. The only reason we don’t see an income tax in that first decade after the Constitution was established is because they did not have the sophisticated mechanism and compliance machinery in place to track what Americans earned at the time. Of course, we can fast forward to Lincoln during the War of Northern Aggression and the passage of the first income tax in American history. The rest, as they say, is history.

As long as we remain within the boxed confines of the Constitution as the only acceptable paradigm from which to divine our freedom and liberty to escape our current difficulties, we will always be trapped in the same system. It is time to set yourself free, Coppertop, because you have been lied to and manipulated by a government-media complex and indoctrinated by a government education system to work within constraints which would never allow you to free yourself of the shackles and fetters you find about your mind and body. It so, don’t take my word for it, start conducting your own research.   The Internet has liberated memory hole and a search of Amazon will show you all of the forgotten texts and books that give a measure and guidance on what direction we can go. Lysander Spooner, the 19th century individualist anarchist, gave us a terrific vision of why the Constitution is fundamentally flawed and a recipe for big government.

In the end, the basic argument comes down to one simple transaction: is initiated aggression through force or fraud at any time a virtuous position for individuals or governments? I seek not only to abolish the Constitution, I seek to abolish the notion that one man without the consent of another can enslave, yoke, compel, tax or regulate another.

During my debate at Freedom Fest 2010, I contended that part of my affection for the Articles of Confederation was in its very ineffectiveness as an instrument of a state or states. What one finds in the Articles of Confederation, is a much truer representation of checks and balances than one would find in the much heralded Constitution in which I would submit there are no checks and balances. How can a government with three distinct branches not evolve over time to simply be a rubber stamp regardless of the branch for the expansion of their respective power at the expense of the individuals from whom they divine all of their succor and material support?

I am hoping that Ron Holland eloquent call to go back to the Articles of Confederation is simply the beginning of a new movement in these united States. One that doesn’t seek to fix an institutionalized system that is forever broken, but one which seeks to liberate all the subsidiary political entities back to their rightful position as masters of their own destiny and captains of their own fate. Ultimately, I favor human devolution in which the state withers away to paraphrase the dreaded Marxism: Philosophy and Economics
, one of the most ignoble and devilish slavers in world history.

Notes on the Margin. I have always been a careful student of language and its influence on how we behave. I used to employ the terms left and right and found them non-descriptive over time. I went on to use the terms collectivist and individualist, interventionist and noninterventionist and employ the concomitant matrices from these descriptions. I’m not satisfied with their descriptive power any longer. I have a better word to describe who the collectivists are and that word is slavers. In the history of yore, the slavers were the people responsible for removing human beings from one place and shipping them to another and putting them in the hands of another human being as the property of that person. That is how government is rationalized today. Simply call them what they are and join me in a new abolitionist crusade. -BB

I just returned from Freedom Fest 2010 in Las Vegas from 8-10 July.  Well over 2000 attendees were there and I debated Dr. Daniel Walker Howe on the Articles of Confederation versus the Constitution on FRI afternoon.  The debate was quite cordial and I do not think that Dr. Howe had a good weather gauge of the audience or the focus of the entire conference.  He is an erudite and gentle man but he clearly thought that a conventional rendering of the benefits of Constitutional government and the usual bigger is better pep speech on the joys of Federal living would suffice.  Au contraire.  I get the sense now that libertarians and liberty-loving conservatives (what few there are) are losing patience with the usual arguments and rationales for better living through bigger government.

There were about two hundred folks in the audience and my arguments seemed to be well received.  I was asking for a complete change of perspective.  Not only was I actively criticizing a document that has an almost mythical reverence rendered to it across the political spectrum but I was plumbing parts of our history that have been willfully and actively been ignored and distorted.  Not only was I questioning the very legitimacy of THE Founding Document but asking people to examine its real effects over the span of time since its ignoble creation and adoption.  The Founding myth has so permeated our consciousness that it has created a practically indestructible meme that has penetrated from right to left.  Whether collectivist or individualist, all the usual suspects have been able to bend the document to their will whether to advance war, social programs or freedom.  This should have set off warning alarums long ago to show that the document is so flexible and malleable that it may have no substance which can actually liberate folks from government control.

I had the joy of seeing Tom Woods give what was the best speech of the conference on new book, Nullification, and bring the house down.  I have stated before that the Supremes and the entire fetid Federal judiciary serve only to rubber stamp the tyranny production emanating from every facet of the Executive Branch.  Woods opined that he discovered that between the years 1937 and 1995, the Federal Courts had not overturned a single US regulation.  Good God!  No surprise to the readers of this blog.

I got to see Thomas DiLorenzo give a great speech on the Lincolnian nightmare we presently live in and what got us here.  I also saw Larry Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education dismember and devour an unfortunate PhD Keynesian apologist who had deigned to defend the socialist policies of the RedDR machine in the 1930s and 1940s.  One almost needed an apron because of the intellectual blood spatter.

My wife and adult children had come with me but the wife and daughter had little interest in the conference.  I had strategically booked the Mandalay Bay to ensure my beloved bride would be amused while I was otherwise engaged at the festivities.   I had the fortune of both my adult children meeting us in Vegas and my son, Kyle, was really excited by the opportunity to get the intellectual shot in the arm that the conference always delivers on.  My favorite Congressional candidate, Brian Miller, was there and he got to meet some important folks like the future Presidential contender for the Grand Old Politburo, Gary Johnson, former two term libertarian governor of New Mexico.   Both are that rara avis in the political candidacy of early 21^st century America – genuine lovers of freedom and liberty.  I am hoping that by 2012 their respective races will be confined to the west where they will run on new national tickets after America breaks apart and finally divides into its natural constituent parts.

All in all, a very satisfying opportunity to see the superstars of the liberty movement in America.  The show booths were a great time to see new books on the market and meet some of the authors.

I am now a confirmed speaker at the Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ 4-6 December 2010 helmed by the energizer bunny of libertarianism, Ernie Hancock.  My speech is entitled, “Secession and the End of America:  The Coming deSovietization of the West”.  This is the same weekend as the Small Arms Review Gun Show so the weekend will be the best combination of guns and freedom.

I will be posting the debate in audio as soon as I work through the technical issues of getting it posted for this very techie-challenged blogger.

My Editor-at-Large brought this to my attention and I would like to cover two issues.  He is dead-on with his assessment of the intelligence debacle we have from soup to nuts under the auspices of all the intelligence dynasties competing for monies at the trough.

There are several notions Steele advanced that made me pause and say BS but overall a sound synopsis of why intelligence is broken in the US and around the world in our alleged fealties.  I still don’t understand his admonition about Lincoln and Kennedy printing money and dying for it.  I wanted to briefly discuss why this is a major concern and something my readers have to get their head around.

The four reserve banks in America’s history were engineered from the beginning to finance a warfare/welfare state on the basis of interest payment service with no fiscal intention of paying on the balance – ever.  This is the grand strategic modus operandi of the Constitution and why despite the protestations of the usual suspects and the Tea Party movement, we cannot go back to our roots because WE NEVER LEFT THEM.  This bankrupt self-destructive system in place today is the continuing design artifact of the original authors tuned over time.  The year 1835 is the ONLY year in American history we have not had a national debt and you know how Andrew Jackson is treated by the court historians.

“I sincerely believe… that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

–Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23

The state must make war on external enemies or enemies within at the Federal level because that is the basis of all fiat currencies.  The British Empire sustained itself through the imposition of a credit-worthiness which could only service the interest payments and NEVER the principle balance, it is a fiscal impossibility to service the debt and pay down principle without the imposition of a crippling tax burden which would destroy the system for the government tax farmers because their once compliant taxpayers would revolt or refuse to pay.  It is no coincidence that Washington was marching on tax protesters a mere four year after the adoption of the Constitution.  I repeat, the Constitution is an ingenious device designed to service an unlimited state and provide the means for a fiscal-military state to sustain itself over time.  It is impossible to pay down the current acknowledged debt and not destroy the vestiges of the productive economy at the same time.  The only avenue left for our rulers is to continue to print money with no value or baseline whatsoever and hope that the adequate job of government education has made most Americans too dull and insipid to notice.  They are banking on your intellectual ineptitude.

Greece paid Goldman Sachs 300 million to help it hide its debt from the EU.  That is why I use the term “acknowledged” because frankly, we have no accurate idea neither how much debt we have nor what the magnitude of money expansion has done to the valuations of these instruments such as Treasury Bonds.  We have yet to register the Alt-A resets and the implosion of the commercial real estate market which is artificially floated on a perverse tax system and depreciations which serve government accounting methodologies but would bankrupt companies competing in a truly free market.

We even see Jefferson starting to predate Lysander Spooner’s keen observations by decades.  To wit:

“Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And if that has not been made, does it exist the less, there being between generation and generation as between nation and nation no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives.”

–Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:360

More on Steele:   http://www.echochamberproject.com/informationpeacekeeping