Stocks fell last week following news that the yield curve on Treasury notes had inverted. This means that a short-term Treasury note was paying higher interest rates than long-term Treasury note. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a sign of an impending recession.
Some economic commentators reacted to the inverted yield curve by parroting the Keynesian propaganda that recessions are an inevitable feature of a free-market economy, whose negative effects can only be mitigated by the Federal Reserve. Like much of the conventional economic wisdom, the idea that recessions are caused by the free market and cured by the Federal Reserve is the exact opposite of the truth.
Interest rates are the price of money. Like all prices, they should be set by the market in order to accurately convey information about economic conditions. When the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, it distorts those signals. This leads investors and businesses to misjudge the true state of the economy, resulting in misallocations of resources.
These misallocations can create an economic boom. However, since the boom is rooted in misperceptions of the true state of the economy, it cannot last. Eventually the Federal Reserve-created bubble bursts, resulting in a recession.
So, recessions are not a feature of the free market. Instead, they are an inevitable result of Congress granting a secretive central bank power to influence the price of money. While monetary policy may be the prime culprit, government tax and regulatory policies also damage the economy. Many regulations, such as the minimum wage and occupational licensing, inflict much harm on the same low-income people that the economic interventionists claim benefit the most from the welfare-regulatory state.
The best thing for Congress and the Federal Reserve to do after the bubble bursts is to let the recession run its course. Recessions are painful but necessary if the economy is going to heal from the damage done by government’s inflate-tax-borrow-spend-and-inflate-some-more policies.
But Congress and the Fed cannot resist the cries to “do something.” So, Congress spends billions on wasteful “economic stimulus” plans and bailouts of politically influential corporations. Meanwhile, the Fed tries to “prime the pump” via new money creation, restarting the whole boom-and-bust cycle.
This is not to say that no one would experience economic difficulties in a free market. Businesses and even whole industries would still close because of changing consumer tastes, new competitors offering superior products, or bad business decisions.
There may even be bubbles in a free market as some investors misread fads as permanent changes in consumer preferences. But periods of downturn would be shorter, and most would only affect specific industries rather than the entire economy.
President Trump’s imposition of tariffs (which are a form of taxes on American consumers) has been particularly harmful. The tariff war has not just raised prices on imported consumer goods. It has also cut off markets for export-reliant businesses, such as manufacturers that import materials used to construct their products.
The trade dispute with China may be the event that pushes the US economy into a major recession or even a depression. However, the trade war is not the root cause of the downturn. The next recession, like every recession since 1913, will come stamped “Courtesy of the Federal Reserve.”
The only way to end the boom-and-bust cycle and restore peace, prosperity, and liberty is to end the welfare-warfare state, repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, and audit then end the Fed.
Several Mid-Atlantic states have expanded their marijuana laws this year, and New Jersey continues to push for full legalization despite federal prohibition.
Recent comments from New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Senate President Steve Sweeney suggest one final legislative effort to legalize marijuana in 2019.
“I think I’ve been consistent that I hoped we could have one more shot at this,” Murphy told reporters last week. “Getting something to happen sooner, if we have a real shot at that, I’d be all in. … Count me all in to try and work toward that.”
The Governor’s promised to legalize marijuana within his first 100 days in office. That was nearly two years ago. The following year-and-a-half has been a rollercoaster of rising and falling expectations for reform advocates. After Murphy and Sweeney came to an early 2019 agreement regarding how recreational marijuana would be taxed, the stage appeared finally set for a legislative vote.
In a surprise decision, the vote was called off at the last minute due to a lack of support. Sweeney then announced the measure would be on hold until it could be presented as a ballot initiative for voters to decide in 2020. The legislative effort to legalize marijuana thus appeared on indefinite hiatus. Both leaders’ recent comments indicate otherwise.
Illinois passed a legalization bill through its legislature. Perhaps more important for economic considerations in the northeast, the State of New York decriminalized marijuana in July. New Jersey politicians may now feel in danger of losing a first-mover advantage in the region.
Governor Murphy has been more successful in expanding New Jersey’s medical marijuana program through executive action. In July he also signed a new bill to further loosen restrictions and increase access to the program. Enrollment has increased from 15,000 to nearly 50,000 patients since Murphy took office.
New York Decriminalization Bill Signed Into Law
The New York legislature passed a decriminalization bill in June. Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law in late July. The law both expunges many past convictions for marijuana possession and reduces penalties in the future. Advocates initially proposed full legalization but shifted strategy after it became clear they lacked enough votes.
“It does do two good things,” said Emma Goodman, a staff attorney in Legal Aid Society’s special litigation unit. Goodman worked with legislators to lobby for legalization.
“It makes something that was a misdemeanor now a violation, and it automatically expunges old misdemeanor convictions,” Goodman said. “That’s more than a lot of states have done. The problem is that it’s just getting rid of one very small amount of low-level offenses and it’s not actually legalizing marijuana … violations are still arrestable offenses in New York.”
New York’s medical marijuana program has approximately 102,000 patients. Some Empire State doctors have begun advocating for expanding the program as a safer alternative than opiates for treating chronic pain.
Pennsylvania Expands Medical Marijuana Program
Pennsylvania now includes anxiety and Tourette’s on the list of qualifying conditions for enrollment in its medical marijuana program. The move by the Pennsylvania Health Department will allow medical marijuana for conditions beyond cancer, epilepsy, seizures, post-traumatic stress disorder, and terminal illness. Similar decisions in other states have led to significant increases in enrollment.
The Keystone State currently has nearly 116,000 patients certified for participation in its medical marijuana program. The program is relatively new, coming online in February 2018.
“The first year that the state’s medical-marijuana program has been operational tells us that this program is working to help Pennsylvanians in need of this medication,” Governor Tom Wolf said. “Patients are realizing the benefits and there has been steady, positive progress that I am pleased to report.”
In its first full year, Pennsylvania collected $2 million in tax revenue from growers and processors. Dispensaries reported $132 million in sales. The program has also expanded to allow patients to purchase marijuana is dried leaf form. Initially, only pills, liquids, or topical ointments were permitted.
“Our goal for the next year and beyond is to increase the number of grower/processors and dispensaries operating, to register even more physicians and to continue the growth of our scientific, medically based program,” Department of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said.
Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program is noteworthy for its promotion of scientific testing. As part of the program, the state-certified eight academic clinical research centers. The mission of the clinical program is to conduct, “Research on the therapeutic or palliative efficacy of medical marijuana limited to the serious medical conditions defined by the act and the temporary regulations.” The state also has four approved laboratories for quality testing and sampling.
Efforts to legalize recreational marijuana have struggled to gain traction. In July, a county judge made headlines when he predicted legalizing marijuana would produce “carnage” on Pennsylvania roadways.
“Marijuana is an hallucinogen,” said Dauphin County Judge William T. Tully. “The idea of legalizing it given the carnage that is likely to result is incomprehensible to me.”
Governor Wolf and Lieutenant Governor Fetterman have expressed their support to “take a serious look” at legalizing recreational marijuana.
Founder at Liberty 2.0Patrick McKnight is the founder and editor in chief of the Liberty 2.0 blog. He served four terms as the Chair of the New Jersey Libertarian Party and two years on the Libertarian National Committee.
He has appeared on the Jason Stapleton Program, NBC TV, and The Libertarian Republic.
While most of us have been thinking about the end of summer and while the political class frets over the Democratic presidential debates and the aborted visit of two members of Congress to Israel, the Trump administration has quietly moved to extend and make permanent the government’s authority to spy on all persons in America.
The president, never at a loss for words, must have been asked by the intelligence community he once reviled not to address these matters in public.
These matters include the very means and the very secret court about which he complained loud and long during the Mueller investigation. Now, he wants to be able to unleash permanently on all of us the evils he claims were visited upon him by the Obama-era FBI and by his own FBI. What’s going on?
Here is the backstory.
After the lawlessness of Watergate had been exposed — a president spying on his political adversaries without warrants in the name of national security — Congress enacted in 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It prescribed a means for surveillance other than that which the Constitution requires.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution — written in the aftermath of British soldiers and agents using general warrants obtained from a secret court in London to spy on whomever in the colonies they wished and to seize whatever they found — was ratified as part of the Bill of Rights to limit the government’s ability to intrude upon the privacy of all persons, thereby prohibiting those procedures used by the British.
Thus, we have the constitutional requirements that no searches and seizures can occur without a warrant issued by a judge based on a showing, under oath, of probable cause of crime. The courts have uniformly characterized electronic surveillance as a search.
I am not addressing eyesight surveillance on a public street. I am addressing electronic surveillance wherever one is when one sends or receives digital communications. FISA is an unconstitutional congressional effort to lower the standards required by the Fourth Amendment from probable cause of crime to probable cause of foreign agency.
Can Congress do that? Can it change a provision of the Constitution? Of course not. If it could, we wouldn’t have a Constitution.
It gets worse.
The court established by FISA — that’s the same court that President Donald Trump asserts authorized spying on him in 2015 and 2016 — has morphed the requirement of probable cause of being a foreign agent to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person as the standard for authorizing surveillance.
What was initially aimed at foreign agents physically present in the United States has secretly become a means to spy on innocent Americans. In Trump’s case, the FISA court used the foreign and irrelevant communications of two part-time campaign workers to justify surveillance on the campaign.
Add to all this the 2002 secret order of President George W. Bush directing the National Security Agency to spy on all in America all the time without warrants — this is what Edward Snowden exposed in 2013 — and one can see what has happened.
What happened?
What happened was the creation of a surveillance state in America that came about by secret court rulings and a once-secret presidential order. As a result of this, part of the government goes to the secret FISA court and obtains search warrants on flimsy and unconstitutional grounds and part of the government bypasses FISA altogether and spies on everyone in America and denies it and lies about it.
Bill Binney, the genius mathematician who once worked for the NSA and now is its harshest critic, has stated many times that, as unconstitutional as FISA is, it is a pretext to NSA spying on all persons in America all the time.
How pervasive is this unlawful spying? According to Binney, the NSA’s 60,000 domestic spies capture the content and the keystrokes of every communication transmitted on fiber optic cables into or out of or wholly within the United States. And they do so 24/7 — without warrants.
Now, back to that quiet late summer proposal by the Trump administration. Some of the statutes that govern who can go to the FISA court and under what circumstances they can go are about to expire. Inexplicably, the president once victimized by FISA wants to make these statutes permanent. And he wants to do so knowing that they are essentially a facade for spying. That would institutionalize the now decades-long federal assault on privacy and evasion of constitutional norms.
It would also place Trump in the same category as his two immediate predecessors, who regularly ordered government agents to violate the Fourth Amendment and then denied they had done so.
Some of my Fox colleagues joke with me that I am shoveling against the tide when it comes to defending the right to privacy. They claim that there is no more privacy. I disagree with them. As long as we still have a Constitution, it must be taken seriously and must mean what it says. And its intentionally stringent requirements for enabling the government to invade privacy remain the law of the land. The president has sworn to uphold the Constitution, not the NSA.
The late Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland once wrote that we cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution to follow and which to ignore. If we could, the Constitution would be meaningless.
Did he foresee our present woes when he wrote, “If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned”?
Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.
…. “the individual-right theory” of the Second Amendment is a linguistic and legalistic delusion of people who suffer from a peculiar sort of illiteracy. For, inasmuch as it derives from the last fourteen words of the Amendment, without reference to the first thirteen, it violates the fundamental—indeed, the very first—rule of constitutional law (as well as of English grammar), that all the words and phrases in each provision of the Constitution (or in an ordinary English sentence) must be construed together and interdependently, as a coherent whole.
Forty-eight years ago, Pres. Richard Nixon ordered Treasury Secretary John Connally to uncouple gold from its fixed $35 price and suspended the ability of foreign banks to directly exchange dollars for gold. In effect, he severed the last tie between the dollar and the gold standard and turned it into a pure fiat currency. By fiat currency, I mean backed only by the *cough* “good name” of the U.S. government.
In other words, backed by a bunch of lying politicians.
During a national television address, Nixon promised the action would be temporary in order to “defend the dollar against the speculators.”
There’s lie number one.
Temporary.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “temporary,” I think a few weeks. Maybe a few months. Not 48 years! As Milton Friedman said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
That brings us to the next lie. And it was a doozie! We’re talking “pants on fire” territory.
When he announced the closing of the gold window, Nixon said, “Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation,” and promised, “your dollar will be worth just as much as it is today.”
What actually happened is the value of the dollar has dropped some 80 percent since Nixon made that fateful decision. Meanwhile, the dollar value of gold has gone from $35 an ounce to about $1,500.
Practically speaking, this means that if you had stashed an ounce of gold along with 35 one-dollar bills under your bed in 1971, today, you could buy an expensive tailored suit with your gold. The $35 in cash wouldn’t get you a pack of fancy underwear.
Of course, Nixon knew damn well that uncoupling the dollar from gold would cause the greenback to devalue. Heck, that was the whole point. As Ryan McMaken summed up:
“Nixon yearned to be free of this restraint so he could spend dollars more freely, and not have to worry about their value in gold. Nixon’s move was, in short, the final and total politicization on money itself, and, as Jim Grant notes, ‘The Ph.D. standard is … a political institution. It is the financial counterpart to the philosophy of statism.’”
So, what have we learned here?
Politicians lie. Nixon lied. Clinton lied. Obama lied. Trump lies. They all lie.
Don’t trust them. Unless of course, they’re telling you they’re going to do something awful. They tend to tell the truth about that. (Horton’s law.)
Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center.He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky.See his blog archive here and his article archive here.He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE
You often hear that an action is “constitutional” or “unconstitutional.” More rarely, you hear the term “extra-constitutional.” Exactly how do these words differ?
An action is constitutional if taken in accordance with a governing constitution. The governing constitution may be written or unwritten. In Britain, to become law a bill must pass the House of Commons and (usually) the House of Lords, and then be approved by the Queen. That is the constitutional procedure. An attempt to enact a law purely by passage in the House of Lords would be unconstitutional.
Of course, a constitutional rule may be changed. In the 18th century, it was unconstitutional to make a law unless both the House of Commons and the House of Lords approved. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, the rules were changed to allow lawmaking in certain circumstances without the consent of the Lords. That procedure thereby became constitutional.
The same general principle applies to written constitutions. Under the U.S. Constitution, a law that has passed the House and Senate and been signed by the president is constitutional unless it is inconsistent with some other term of the Constitution. A measure that attempted to ban free speech for all Democrats would be unconstitutional as violating the First Amendment, even if it somehow managed to win approval of Senate, House, and president.
In our federal system a state measure may be constitutional under the U.S. Constitution but unconstitutional under the basic law of the state—or vice versa. For example, nothing in the U.S. Constitution bans states from making gifts of public money to private persons or entities.
As far as that document is concerned, a state legislative act making such a grant is perfectly constitutional. However, some state constitutions do contain provisions banning gifts of public money to private persons or entities. In that case, such a grant is unconstitutional at the state level, even if perfectly legal at the federal level. (Note: In some states with constitutional provisions of this kind, activist courts have gutted them.)
On the other hand, suppose a state legislature adopted a “bill of attainder”—a legislative measure declaring a person to be a felon. If the state’s constitution does not contain an express or implied ban on such measures, then it would be constitutional at the state level.
But it is unconstitutional at the federal level, because the U.S. Constitution forbids states from adopting bills of attainder. In this instance, the federal document controls.
Of course, an enactment also may be unconstitutional under the basic laws of both the state and federal governments. Most, if not all, state constitutions protect free speech, so a law banning speech by Democrats would be unconstitutional at both levels.
Finally, we come to the term extra-constitutional. This refers to an action that is simply outside the purview of the governing constitutions. For example, American constitutions have nothing to say about whether you must or must not wear a hat. Your decision on that subject is extra-constitutional. (Some would argue that it is covered by the Ninth Amendment, but I disagree for reasons outlined in my book, The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant.)
Here’s another example: The U.S. Constitution authorizes, under certain circumstances, three kinds of conventions (ad hoc meetings for specific political purposes). Article V authorizes both a “Convention for proposing Amendments” and state conventions for ratifying proposed amendments. Article VII authorizes state conventions for ratifying the Constitution itself. Calling any of those gatherings in compliance with the Constitution’s rules is, of course, constitutional.
But the U.S. Constitution does not authorize a constitutional convention—that is, a gathering charged with drafting and proposing an entirely new basic law. If the states wished, they could call such a meeting, but doing so would be extra-constitutional. Indeed, states have done so on two occasions: Virginia called, and 12 states, staffed the 1787 constitutional convention outside the Articles of Confederation. And in 1861, seceding southern states called and staffed a constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Both of these actions were extra-constitutional.
An extra-constitutional action may be legal or illegal under the law of the prevailing government (“positive law”). Deciding whether to wear a hat is both extra-constitutional and legal. Similarly, because the Articles of Confederation comprised a mere treaty or league rather than a true government, it was perfectly legal for the sovereign states to hold the 1787 Constitutional Convention and then set aside the Articles in favor of the convention’s proposal. On the other hand, the U.S. Constitution rendered it illegal for the southern states to implement the Montgomery convention’s proposed constitution.
The right of revolution defended in the Declaration of Independence is the American people’s ultimate extra-constitutional remedy. Of course, revolutions violate the prevailing government’s positive law. But as the Founders recognized, sometimes a government becomes so oppressive that natural law permits a people to override positive law.
In private life, Rob Natelson is a long-time conservative/free market activist, but professionally he is a constitutional scholar whose meticulous studies of the Constitution’s original meaning have been repeatedly cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions and published or cited by many top law journals (See: https://i2i.org/author/rob/) He co-authored The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Cambridge University Press) and The Original Constitution (Tenth Amendment Center). He was a law professor for 25 years and taught constitutional law and related courses. He is the Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at Colorado’s Independence Institute.
On June 20, 2019, the Supreme Court held that spending public funds to maintain a 40-foot Christian cross on public land doesn’t violate the U.S. Constitution.
The cross is a conspicuous symbol at a busy intersection in Prince George’s County, Maryland. It’s unaccompanied by representations of other faiths. Thus, a humanist (non-religious) organization sued to have it removed, claiming it is an unconstitutional state endorsement of Christianity.
The cross was dedicated in 1925. It memorializes soldiers who died in World War I. The court’s 7–2 decision in its favor was driven partly by the length of time the cross had stood. Even if it had once been primarily a religious symbol, said the court, it is no longer. It’s now a historical monument and memorial to our soldiers. Forcing its removal might spur divisive lawsuits against historical monuments throughout the country.
The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. For obvious reasons, lawyers call this phrase the Establishment Clause. In the 20th century, the Supreme Court ruled (for reasons far less obvious) that the Establishment Clause restricts not only Congress but all branches of government—and not only the federal government, but the states as well. The government agency maintaining the cross is a subdivision of the state of Maryland.
Cases involving the Establishment Clause are often difficult to decide. More liberal Supreme Court justices have argued that the clause requires officials to ensure an absolute or nearly absolute “wall of separation” between religion and government. According to this view, the motto “In God We Trust” should be removed from our coins and the words “under God” expunged from the Pledge of Allegiance.
On the other side of the spectrum, some argue that the clause was designed only (1) to prevent the federal government from creating an English-style official church, and (2) to protect state official churches. Some say the clause is violated only if government coerces people into religious conformity, or if the government endorses some religions over others, or supports religion over non-religion.
The confusion arises largely because when the First Amendment was proposed (1789) and ratified (1789–1791), there was little public discussion about what it meant. So in searching for evidence of meaning, writers have gone very far afield. Some look to events as early as 1636, long before the Establishment Clause was written. Others look to the 19th century, long after the clause was adopted.
The real key to the meaning of the Establishment Clause lies in events between 1786 to 1790.
Prior to that time, almost every American state used tax money to fund selected churches and imposed religious tests on officeholders. By 1786, however, a move to “disestablish” state churches was underway. The most famous incident of this kind was James Madison’s successful fight to block a church-funding tax in Virginia.
The following year, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia. George Washington, the convention president, received a letter from Jonas Phillips, a leader of the Philadelphia Jewish community. Phillips complained that the states still treated Jews as second-class citizens. He noted that “the Jews have been true and faithfull … and during the late contest with England they have been foremost in aiding and assisting the states with their lifes [sic] and fortunes, they have supported the cause, have bravely fought and bleed [sic] for Liberty which they can not Enjoy.”
Accordingly, Phillips asked the delegates not to include a religious test in the new Constitution.
And the delegates agreed. They produced a document banning religious tests as requirements for federal office.
But the Constitution did require state and federal officeholders to take an oath or affirmation—a calling of God as a witness. Under the law of the time, this excluded atheists from office.
To become effective, the Constitution had to be approved by popular conventions in the states. At these conventions, many opponents complained about the Constitution’s lack of a religious test. Some opponents wanted to limit federal office to Christians. Others wanted to restrict it to Protestants. Opponents warned that without a religious test, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, pagans, Deists, and even atheists might be elected.
The response of the Constitution’s supporters became the basis of the constitutional bargain. It crystallized the principles by which the federal government was to treat religion.
First, they pointed out that the oath requirement excluded atheists. Second, they stoutly contended that all believers in God were to be treated equally.
For example, in North Carolina, James Iredell (who later served on the U.S. Supreme Court) argued that the oath was a sufficient test of religious faith—and the faith need not be Christian. Similarly, in Massachusetts, Daniel Shute, a Christian minister, told his state’s ratifying convention, “I believe, sir, that there are worthy characters among men of every denomination.”
By the time ratification was complete, the Constitution’s implications for religion were understood: Religious faith was valuable for good government. But government was to treat individual religions equally, as long as they conducted themselves in an orderly manner.
As I have documented in detail, the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses reflected this understanding: Government might support religion in general, but religions were to be treated impartially.
The central figure in the entire drama was James Madison. He led the fight for disestablishment in Virginia. He was the leading sponsor of the Constitutional Convention. He was a leading drafter of the Constitution itself. And Madison was the primary congressional drafter and sponsor of the First Amendment.
This essay first appeared in July 7, 2019 issue of the Epoch Times.
In private life, Rob Natelson is a long-time conservative/free market activist, but professionally he is a constitutional scholar whose meticulous studies of the Constitution’s original meaning have been repeatedly cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions and published or cited by many top law journals (See: https://i2i.org/author/rob/) He co-authored The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Cambridge University Press) and The Original Constitution (Tenth Amendment Center). He was a law professor for 25 years and taught constitutional law and related courses. He is the Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at Colorado’s Independence Institute.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out … without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” — H. L. Mencken
The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.
No, this is not another conspiracy theory.
Although it is certainly not far-fetched to suggest that the government might be engaged in nefarious activities that run counter to the best interests of the American people, doing so will likely brand me a domestic terrorist under the FBI’s new classification system.
Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.
Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.
The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.
The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.
Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.
The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely ten short years away—but the future is here ahead of schedule.
We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.
By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.
The danger signs are screaming out a message
The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.
What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.
The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.
And then comes the kicker.
Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”
Drain the swamps.
Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?
Ah yes.
Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans.
Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now the government has adopted its own plans for swamp-draining, only it wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”
And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?
They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”
They are “threats.”
They are the “enemy.”
They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).
In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.
In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.
If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.
Suddenly it all begins to make sense.
The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.
The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.
This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.
You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls.
Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.
Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.
It’s happening already.
The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.
Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback.
The Deep State’s tactics are working.
We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helmmilitary drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.
Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned about the government’s nefarious schemes to lock down the nation.
Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.
Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.
And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats.
Seriously, think about it.
The government claims to be protecting us from cyberterrorism, but who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from foreign armed threats, but who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government. For that matter, where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to anti-missile defenses? From the U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from terrorist plots, but what country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.
The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.
The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.
Just think about it for a minute: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars.
Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.
Did I say Machiavellian? This is downright evil.
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.
Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.
I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.
What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.
You want to change things? Start by rejecting the political labels and the polarizing rhetoric and the “us vs. them” tactics that reduce the mass power of the populace to puny, powerless factions.
Find common ground with your fellow citizens and push back against the government’s brutality, inhumanity, greed, corruption and power grabs.
Be dangerous in the best way possible: by thinking for yourself, by refusing to be silenced, by choosing sensible solutions over political expediency and bureaucracy.
When all is said and done, the solution to what ails this country is really not that complicated: decency, compassion, common sense, generosity balanced by fiscal responsibility, fairness, a commitment to freedom principles, and a firm rejection of the craven, partisan politics of the Beltway elites who have laid the groundwork for the government’s authoritarian coup d’etat.
With the gun control debate back on the front-burner, a 2016 MarketWatch article asserting that. “The Second Amendment doesn’t give you the right to own a gun” is making the rounds across social media. The article perpetuates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights and demonstrates the danger of basing your constitutional expertise on one Federalist Paper.
Columnist Brett Arends wrote the article. His bio describes him as “an award-winning financial columnist with many years experience writing about markets, economics and personal finance.”
Arends actually gets one thing right. He correctly asserts that the Second Amendment doesn’t give anybody the right to own a gun. Absolutely true, but not for the reason he imagines.
In fact, the Bill of Rights doesn’t give anybody any rights at all. It prohibits the federal government from interfering with rights each individual already has. They should have called the first 10 amendments the “Bill of Restrictions.” It would have eliminated a lot of confusion.
In the case of the Second Amendment, it prohibits the federal government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. The language of the amendment assumes “the people” – all of them – already have the natural right to possess firearms. The amendment simply prohibits the federal government from interfering with it.
No exceptions. No excuses.
But Arends asserts the Second Amendment doesn’t “give you” the right to keep and bear arms unless you serve in the militia – or the National Guard.
“It specifically says that right exists in order to maintain ‘a well-regulated militia.’ Even the late conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia admitted those words weren’t in there by accident. Oh, and the Constitution doesn’t just say a ‘militia.’ It says a ‘well-regulated’ militia.”
Arends builds his argument on Federalist #29, penned by Alexander Hamilton. This strikes me as an odd basis for an argument about the Second Amendment given it was written 17 months before the Second Amendment was even proposed.
Arends asserts that Hamilton’s musings in Federalist #29 tell us exactly what the founding generation meant by a “well-regulated militia” and “why the Founding Fathers thought we needed one, and why they wanted to protect it from being disarmed by the federal government.” This, he claims, reveals the true meaning of the Second Amendment. It was intended to protect the National Guard.
In fact, the essay doesn’t tell us anything about what the “founding fathers” thought about the militia. It tells us what Alexander Hamilton thought about it. And although he was an influential figure in the founding generation, his views hardly represented any kind of consensus.
Arends cobbles together phrases cherrypicked from various sections of the essay to paint a picture of the militia.
A “well-regulated militia” didn’t mean guys who read Soldier of Fortune magazine running around in the woods with AK-47s and warpaint on their faces. It basically meant what today we call the National Guard. It should be a properly constituted, ordered and drilled (“well-regulated”) military force, organized state by state, explained Hamilton. Each state militia should be a “select corps,” “well-trained” and able to perform all the “operations of an army.” The militia needed “uniformity in … organization and discipline,” wrote Hamilton, so that it could operate like a proper army “in camp and field,” and so that it could gain the “essential … degree of proficiency in military functions.” And although it was organized state by state, it needed to be under the explicit control of the national government. The “well-regulated militia” was under the command of the president. It was “the military arm” of the government.
But Arends strips Hamilton’s words from their context to build his argument. Hamilton wasn’t describing the militia as it was but as he would like it to be. In practice, the militia was not a “select corps” nor a specialized military force. It was made up of every able-bodied man, as George Mason explained during the Virginia ratifying convention.
Mr. Chairman, a worthy member has asked who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country, and if we are not to be protected from the fate of the Germans, Prussians, &c., by our representation? I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor… [Emphasis added]
“[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.”
In Federalist #29, Hamilton was addressing the arguments of people like Mason and A Federal Farmer who believed the Constitution would allow the general government to turn the militia into the “select corps” Ardens describes. Hamilton did not find this problematic. In fact, he thought it would be ideal, and he was trying to sell this idea to the public. Hamilton made this clear in the body of the essay.
“But so far from viewing the matter in the same light with those who object to select corps as dangerous, were the Constitution ratified, and were I to deliver my sentiments to a member of the federal legislature from this State on the subject of a militia establishment, I should hold to him, in substance, the following discourse.”
Hamilton then goes on to argue for his vision of a select militia that Ardens parrots. But this was far from a majority view, even among supporters of ratification.
In An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Noah Webster took a completely different tack in defending the Constitution than Hamilton. He insisted that the fact the whole body of people was armed created a bulwark against tyranny the proposed general government may
The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. [Emphasis added]
The fear was that the militia clause in the Constitution would give the general government the power to fundamentally change the nature of the militia and even disarm the people. This is exactly why the Second Amendment was proposed. It wasn’t to ensure Hamilton’s vision would come to pass. It was to prevent it. It was to preserve the existing militia system, which depended on “the whole people” maintaining the ability to arm themselves.
Many of the state ratifying conventions insisted on amendments, including a provision to protect the right to keep and bear arms, as a condition of ratification. This was precisely because they did not embrace Hamilton’s vision for the militia and rejected his assurances that it was the best path forward. They wanted to ensure the militia would remain the “whole body of people.” This is why the Second Amendment declares “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Not some people. Not select people who join the “National Guard.” All of the people. Because essentially all of the people were understood to make up the militia.
So Arends is right that maintaining the integrity of the militia was a key reason for the Second Amendment. But he goes off the rails because he doesn’t understand the true nature of the militia. He misses the direct connection between the militia and “the people.”
He should have stuck to markets, economics and finance. His attempt to play constitutional expert gets an F.
Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center.He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky.See his blog archive here and his article archive here.He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE
According to Governing, during the last election Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) backed 40 winning candidates at the state, county, and municipal levels. Eleven of the candidates were endorsed by the national Democratic Socialists organization, and twenty-nine others were supported by local chapters.
Of course, the highest profile candidates among Democratic Socialists were congressional aspirants Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
Only a few days ago, an article in The Guardian, titled “We’re Here to Win: U.S. Democratic Socialists Move to Center Stage, reported:
“Nearly 100 democratic socialists now hold elected office across the country, from school boards to state legislatures and Congress, where Ocasio-Cortez and the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib have become avatars of an emboldened leftwing insurgency. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, whose popularity has helped soften public perception of socialism…, is a top-tier candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination.”
