Books Used In The Summary: Tragedy and Hope, The Anglo-American Establishment, War Is A Racket,
1984, Brave New World, The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, Lord Milner’s Second War, Globalization and the Crucible of
Global Banking, Prolonging The Agony, Propaganda, Technocracy Rising, The Sorrows of Empire, Manifest Destiny,
Trilaterals Over Washington, Hidden History - The Secret Origins of The First World War, Wall Street and FDR,
Between Two Ages, Transhumanism, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Trilaterals Over America, The Prince,
Western Technology - Soviet Economic Development, America’s Secret Establishment, National Suicide - Military Aid
To The Soviet Union, The United Nations’ Global Straitjacket, When Central Banks Rule The World, Technocracy - The
Hard Road to World Order, Wall Street And The Rise of Hitler, Tragedy and Hope 101.
“Government is not reason, it is
not
eloquence, it is force; like fire, a
troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible
action.”
-- George Washington
In other words, government is something the people have to
keep an eye on or corruption will ensue and burn everything down as it has throughout history. The
purpose of government is to protect the individual rights of its citizens...Nevertheless, it seems the fires
of tyranny are truly raging out of control here in American and worldwide as well. But form your own opinion after
you've seen the accessible documentation. It's all right here so let's get started!
May we never
forget that freedom is not free.(Adapted portions from Naomi Wolf's : Ten Steps To Close
Down an Open Society.)Because Americans are born in freedom, we have a hard time even
considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no
longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has
been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we
scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically
dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland"
security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might
have.
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps,
rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, freedom had
been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over
radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain
activists into custody.
They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is
essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That
blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways.
1 Invoke a terrifying internal and
external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of
national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that
had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a
"war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There
have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war,
when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were
interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda has noted, is unprecedented: all our
other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as
open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time,"
Fein says, "there will be no defined end."
Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation
of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls
for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of
February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional
law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist
evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.
It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the
language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered
violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat;
what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know
it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to
create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at
Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.
At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the
people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and
they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour
activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.
This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the
1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an
open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept
indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now.
Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black
site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.
Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised.
We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty,
have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.
But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't
generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin
Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't
understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.
By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a
fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's
Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured,
without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a
parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when
making decisions.
Whenleaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want
to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The
Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout
Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence
and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush
administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts
worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In
Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing
journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time
US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution
Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland
Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist
Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a
natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope
for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US
cities.
Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced
poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a
need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election;
history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public
order".
In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East
Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage
neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to
convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.
In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme
to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to
ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.
In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep
citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.
The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you
infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus
was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got
Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.
Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American
anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more
than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500
"suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of
Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa
is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed
new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist"
slowly expands to include the opposition.
The story goes that Benjamin Franklin was approached by a woman as
he left the Constitutional Convention 1
She asked:
“What have you given us?”
Franklin is said to have replied:
“A republic, if you can keep
it.”
Look Into It Quick Start (Site Recommendations)
6
Engage in arbitrary detention and release
This scares people. It is a
kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China
Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei
Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents
and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the
list.
In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a
list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found
themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a
member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US
citizens.
Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the
foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a
decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied
a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".
"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of
that," asked the airline employee.
"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006,
given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations
of the constitution."
"That'll do it," the man said.
Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential
terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil
life.
James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of
mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped.
Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.
Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as
a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the
accusation against him, he is still on the list.
It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you
can't get off.
Threaten civil servants,
artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state
universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not
pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy
students and professors.
Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish
academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since
civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group
that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil
Service was passed on April 7 1933.
Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at
state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil
servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for
detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by
threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is
torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.
Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like
insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated"
too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.
Italy in the 1920s, Germany
in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China
in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and
harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that
have been closed already.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an
all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to
turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg
Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of
Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.
Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson
accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam
Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of
retaliation that ended her career.
Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating
journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has
documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning
independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners
may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's
Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and
the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news
organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false
documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about
to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you
can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.
What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is
increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the
muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by
bit.
Cast dissent as "treason"
and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly
criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the
publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified
information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and
rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted,
reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.
Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also
important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason;
Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last
widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping
roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with
death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a
decade.
In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National
Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".
And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since
September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the
president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy
combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define
"enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.
Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely
innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark
tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in
isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers
psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like
Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation
cells.)
We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists
at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to
find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even
something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like
you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the
CCR.
Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even
though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of
opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still
newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just
isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.
The John Warner Defense
Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national
emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a
state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its
citizens.
Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of
who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon
in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ...
Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a
natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."
Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant
to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator
Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason
the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the
founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands
of an oppressive executive or faction.
Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down
of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic
habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like
that.
Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed
down by a process of erosion.
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of
barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating
harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as
WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are
sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the
disaster."
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and
American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that
weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in
a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in
a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom
or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these
still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent
such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".
What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty
bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted
to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we
are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted
to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and
compromise.
What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or
espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail?
What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they
would suddenly be very polite.
Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny
for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the
detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and
prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the
American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of
Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see
what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.
We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this
road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might
have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way
it is now.
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the
same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this
road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to
carry.
“Yes, there’s a systematic assault on the
Constitution, on the Bill of Rights without any justification,other than
political expediency in thinking
you can profit off of frightening the people.” - Bruce Fein -
The Erosion of the Constitution
and The Right of Habeas Corpus
Friendly Fire with John Whitehead - Bruce Fein | Jun 25, 2007
Political maverick Bruce Fein tackles Congress, the erosion of the Constitution and the right of
habeas corpus in this Friendly Fire with John Whitehead. Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general under
President Ronald Reagan, commands impressive experience and influence in the corridors of both national and
international power. He is the chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, which works to restore the Constitution's
checks and balances and prevent abuses of power.
[A MUST SEE]
Fear and Centralization of
Power: A Disaster
in the Making for Liberty
Tenth Amendment Center | 3/27/20
We can't say we weren't warned. Fear is the foundation, and politicians and bureaucrats use that
fear to centralize and expand their own power. 10 timeless quotes from the Founders and old Revolutionaries
Path to Liberty, Fast Friday Edition: March 27, 2020
On the 12th anniversary of 9/11, a new national survey by the polling firm YouGov reveals that one
in two Americans have doubts about the government's account of 9/11, and after viewing video footage of World Trade
Center Building 7's collapse, 46% suspect that it was caused by a controlled demolition. Building 7, a 47-story
skyscraper, collapsed into its own footprint late in the afternoon on 9/11. The poll was sponsored by ReThink911, a
global public awareness campaign launched on September 1. The campaign includes a 54-foot billboard in Times Square
and a variety of transit and outdoor advertising in 11 other cities, all posing the question, "Did you know a third
tower fell on 9/11?"
Among the poll's findings:
- 38% of Americans have some doubts about the official account of 9/11, 10% do not believe it at all, and 12% are
unsure about it;
- 46%, nearly one in two, are not aware that a third tower collapsed on 9/11. Of those who are aware of Building
7's collapse, only 19% know the building's name;
- After seeing video footage of Building 7′s collapse:
- 46% are sure or suspect it was caused by controlled demolition, compared to 28% who are sure or suspect fires
caused it, and 27% who don't know; [in other words, more people think controlled demolition than believe the
government's narrative]
- By a margin of nearly two to one, 41% support a new investigation of Building 7′s collapse, compared to 21% who
oppose it.
We all know the old trope of the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who believes crazy
things like "the government is spying on us" and "the military is spraying things in the sky" and "the CIA ships in
the drugs." Except those things aren't so crazy after all. Here are five examples of things that were once derided
as zany conspiracy paranoia and are now accepted as mundane historical fact.
"We have arrived at a period in American and world history when being awake is
of utmost importance. Being in a position of leadership and yet asleep to critical issues at such a time will
certainly lead to the ‘disastrous results..." -- An excerpt from, Asleep At The Switch: An Open Letter to America's
Pastors
It is easy to be distracted right now by the circus politics that dominate the news headlines. But
stop being distracted. Don’t be fooled, not even a little, no matter how tempting it seems to just take a peek.
Why? We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you
focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. As
John W. Whitehead warns in this episode of On Target, this is how tyranny rises and freedom falls. https://www.rutherford.org
As the lockdowns go into place and the military takes to the streets
in country after country, the decades of preparation for medical martial law are finally paying off forthe pandemic
planners. Today on this emergency edition of The Corbett Report podcast, James lays out the steps that have led us
to the brink of martial law and the steps that are being taken to implement it now. Please help to spread this
important information and to raise awareness of the crisis that we are facing.
"Here’s the bottom line. You are not supposed to wait 2 or
4 years for some new politicians to get in office and give your permission to be free. You are not supposed to
wait 2 or 4 or 6 years for some federal court to tell you, “ok, you be free now.” You are supposed to stand up
resist, refuse to comply and nullify unconstitutional federal acts – as soon as they happen. All the money and
time you throw at firing congress or winning in federal court will never, ever work – unless you start resisting
right here in your state. And, that resistance needs to be your first response, not your
last."- Michael Boldin, Article: James Madison: How to Stop
the Federal Government
In response to federal overreach, most people tend to focus on three types of actions to stop them: elections,
conventions, and lawsuits. While they all have their place in an overall strategy to defend the Constitution, none
of them should be the first step forward. That is, if you follow the advice of the “Father of
the Constitution.”
Here’s what James Madison had to say in Federalist
#46. The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared:
“Should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would
seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of
opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps refusal
to cooperate with officers of the Union, the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassment
created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, very
serious impediments; and were the sentiments of several adjoining States happen to be in Union, would present
obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.”
Let me translate. Madison said that when the federal government passes an unconstitutional measure there are
powerful methods to oppose it – amongst the people and in the states. He also pointed out that those methods were
available even for warrantable, that is constitutional, measures.
Madison told us of four things that should be done to resist federal powers, whether merely unpopular, or
unconstitutional.
1. Disquietude of the people – Madison expected the people would throw a fit when the feds usurped
power – even using the word “repugnance” to describe their displeasure. That leads to the next step.
2. Repugnance and Refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union – Noncompliance. The #1
dictionary of the time defined repugnance as “disobedient; not obsequious” (compliant). If you want to stop the
federal government, you have to disobey them. Madison also suggested that people would perhaps directly refuse to
cooperate with federal agents. This is an approach we preach here every day at the Tenth Amendment Center. James
Madison apparently knew what we know today. The feds rely on cooperation from state and local governments, as well
as individuals. When enough people refuse to comply, they simply can’t enforce their so-called laws.
3, The frowns of the executive magistracy of the State – Here Madison envisions governors formally
protesting federal actions. This not only raises public awareness; executive leadership will also lead to the next
step – legislative action.
4. Legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions – Madison keeps this
open-ended, and in the years soon after, which I’ll cover shortly, we learn how both he and Thomas Jefferson
applied this step.
Madison also told us that if several adjoining States would do the same it would be an effective tool to stop
federal acts. To repeat, he said that doing this “would present obstructions which the federal government would
hardly be willing to encounter.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano agreed recently and said that people need to stop enforcing unconstitutional federal
laws. He also said that if you could get an entire state doing this, it would make federal laws “nearly impossible
to enforce.”
What’s important to note here, are some glaring omissions. The powerful means that Madison told us would be used
to oppose federal power successfully did NOT include federal lawsuits in federal courts. He also did NOT include
“voting the bums out” as a strategy, either.
FIRST RESPONSE
Compare that with how people generally respond to what they consider unconstitutional or unpopular federal acts
today.
The first thing I tend to hear from people who are opposed to a federal act is the “vote the bums out” mantra.
We’ll fire congress, right?
Or some people tell us we have to sue and let the courts decide.
I’ve got some news for you. There’s nothing from the founders – anywhere – in which they tell us that our first
response to extreme, repeated violations of the constitution and liberty is to vote the bums out, or sue the feds
in federal court. Nothing.
LEGISLATIVE DEVICES
Thomas Jefferson followed up on this in 1798 with the same kind of advice. That year, the Adams administration
passed a wildly unconstitutional attack on the freedom of speech with the Alien and Sedition Acts. In response,
while sitting as vice-president, Jefferson secretly drafted the Kentucky Resolutions, and here’s a little of what
he wrote:
“The several states composing the united states of america are not united on a principle of unlimited
submission to their general government.”
“where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful
remedy”
“that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact to nullify of their own authority all
assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion,
absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them”
Madison was consistent in his views on this. In 1798, he also drafted and help pass something known as the
Virginia Resolutions, a state-level “legislative device” in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Here’s a key
part:
in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said
compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting
the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and
liberties appertaining to them.
Like Madison advised in Federalist #46, both he and Thomas Jefferson advised a state-level response to dangerous
federal acts. In 1798, neither of them even mentioned voting or lawsuits.
Jefferson told us that a “nullification is the rightful remedy.” And Madison told us that states are “duty-bound
to interpose.”
When Daniel Webster called on these same principles in response to military conscription plans during the war of
1812, he said:
“The operation of measures thus unconstitutional and illegal ought to be prevented by a resort to other
measures which are both constitutional and legal. It will be the solemn duty of the State governments to
protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary
power. These are among the objects for which the State governments exist; and their highest obligations bind
them to the preservation of their own rights and the liberties of their people”
Here’s the bottom line. You are not supposed to wait 2 or 4 years for some new politicians to get in office and
give your permission to be free. You are not supposed to wait 2 or 4 or 6 years for some federal court to tell you,
“ok, you be free now.”
You are supposed to stand up resist, refuse to comply and nullify unconstitutional federal acts – as soon as
they happen.
All the money and time you throw at firing congress or winning in federal court will never, ever work – unless
you start resisting right here in your state. And, that resistance needs to be your first response, not your
last.
By Andrew P. Napolitano -
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
One of my Fox colleagues recently sent me an email attachment of a painting of the framers signing
the Constitution of the United States. Except in this version, George Washington — who presided at the
Constitutional Convention — looks at James Madison — who was the scrivener at the Convention — and says, “None of
this counts if people get sick, right?”
In these days of state governors issuing daily decrees purporting to criminalize the exercise of
our personal freedoms, the words put into Washington’s mouth are only mildly amusing. Had Washington actually asked
such a question, Madison, of all people, would likely have responded: “No. This document protects our natural
rights at all times and under all circumstances.”
It is easy, 233 years later, to offer that hypothetical response, particularly since the Supreme
Court has done so already when, as readers of this column will recall, Abraham Lincoln suspended the
constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus — the right to be brought before a judge upon arrest — only to be
rebuked by the Supreme Court.
The famous line above by Benjamin Franklin, though uttered in a 1755 dispute between the
Pennsylvania legislature and the state’s governor over taxes, nevertheless provokes a truism.
Namely, that since our rights come from our humanity, not from the government, foolish people can
only sacrifice their own freedoms, not the freedoms of others.
Thus, freedom can only be taken away when the government proves fault at a jury trial. This
protection is called procedural due process, and it, too, is guaranteed in the Constitution.
Of what value is a constitutional guarantee if it can be violated when people get sick? If it can,
it is not a guarantee; it is a fraud. Stated differently, a constitutional guarantee is only as valuable and
reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping.
Because the folks in government, with very few exceptions, suffer from what St. Augustine called
libido dominandi — the lust to dominate — when they are confronted with the age-old clash of personal liberty
versus government force, they will nearly always come down on the side of force.
How do they get away with this? By scaring the daylights out of us. I never thought I’d see this in
my lifetime, though our ancestors saw this in every generation. In America today, we have a government of fear.
Machiavelli offered that men obey better when they fear you than when they love you. Sadly, he was right, and the
government in America knows this.
But Madison knew this as well when he wrote the Constitution. And he knew it four years later when
he wrote the Bill of Rights. He intentionally employed language to warn those who lust to dominate that, however
they employ governmental powers, the Constitution is “the Supreme Law of the Land” and all government behavior in
America is subject to it.
Even if the legislature of the State of New York ordered, as my friend Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who as
the governor, cannot write laws that incur criminal punishment — has ordered, it would be invalid as prohibited by
the Constitution.
This is not a novel or an arcane argument. This is fundamental American law. Yet, it is being
violated right before our eyes by the very human beings we have elected to uphold it. And each of them — every
governor interfering with the freedom to make one’s own choices — has taken an express oath to comply with the
Constitution.
You want to bring the family to visit grandma? You want to engage in a mutually beneficial, totally
voluntary commercial transaction? You want to go to work? You want to celebrate Mass? These are all now prohibited
in one-third of the United States.
I tried and failed to find Mass last Sunday. When did the Catholic Church become an agent of the
state? How about an outdoor Mass?
What is the nature of freedom? It is an unassailable natural claim against all others, including
the government. Stated differently, it is your unconditional right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to
publish what you say, to associate with whomever wishes to be with you no matter their number, to worship or not,
to defend yourself, to own and use property as you see fit, to travel where you wish, to purchase from a willing
seller, to be left alone. And to do all this without a government permission slip.
What is the nature of government? It is the negation of freedom. It is a monopoly of force in a
designated geographic area. When elected officials fear that their base is slipping, they will feel the need to do
something — anything — that will let them claim to be enhancing safety. Trampling liberty works for that odious
purpose. Hence a decree commanding obedience, promising safety and threatening punishment.
These decrees — issued by those who have no legal authority to issue them, enforced by cops who
hate what they are being made to do, destructive of the freedoms that our forbearers shed oceans of blood to
preserve and crushing economic prosperity by violating the laws of supply and demand — should all be rejected by an
outraged populace, and challenged in court.
These challenges are best filed in federal courts, where those who have trampled our liberties will
get no special quarter. I can tell you from my prior life as a judge that most state governors fear nothing more
than an intellectually honest, personally courageous, constitutionally faithful federal judge.
Fight fear with fear.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is a regular contributor
to The Washington Times. He is the author of nine books on the U.S. Constitution.
Look Into It | Apr 18, 2020
What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?
By Andrew P. Napolitano - Wednesday, March 25, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
One of my Fox colleagues recently sent me an email attachment of a painting of the framers signing
the Constitution of the United States. Except in this version, George Washington — who presided at the
Constitutional Convention — looks at James Madison — who was the scrivener at the Convention — and says, “None of
this counts if people get sick, right?”
In these days of state governors issuing daily decrees purporting to criminalize the exercise of
our personal freedoms, the words put into Washington’s mouth are only mildly amusing. Had Washington actually asked
such a question, Madison, of all people, would likely have responded: “No. This document protects our natural
rights at all times and under all circumstances.”
----------------------
Excerpts Read by Chuck Baldwin: Sermon Titled: "The Plague Of His Own Heart"
"Education is favorable to Liberty. Freedom can only
exist in a society of knowledge.Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights, and where learning is confined to a
few people, Liberty can neither be equal nor universal."
The Corbett Report Official LBRY Channel | April 10th, 2016
SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=18377
Clocking in at 1300 pages of small print text, Carroll Quigley's seminal work, Tragedy and Hope, is an
intimidating and weighty tome. Today we talk to Joe Plummer of JoePlummer.com about his guide to Quigley's
massive book. Available as a free e-book or as a paperback or kindle purchase and dubbed Tragedy and Hope 101,
Plummer's guide condenses, summarizes, explains and footnotes the highlights and lowlights of the text so you
can understand the nature of the conspiratorial network that Quigley exposed and why this information is so
important.
Is "democracy" just a carefully managed con game? Professor Quigley not only spent decades
researching and writing about those who secretly control the machinery of our “representative governments,” he
was permitted to examine their secret papers. He was invited in, but he ultimately betrayed their trust when he
exposed their plans and their methods.
- Joe Plummer -
G. Edward Griffin The Quigley Formula
Bill Clinton And More From The Archives!
Jason Bermas
Premiered Aug 20, 2019
G. Edward Griffin The Quigley Formula Bill Clinton And More From The Archives!
Another great speaker who lays out a compelling narrative of history in the archived series!
