The Federal Reserve, responding to concerns about the economy and the stock market, and perhaps to criticisms by President Trump, recently changed course on interest rates by cutting its “benchmark” rate from 2.25 percent to two percent. President Trump responded to the cut in already historically-low rates by attacking the Fed for not committing to future rate cuts.
The Fed’s action is an example of a popular definition of insanity: doing the same action over and over again and expecting different results. After the 2008 market meltdown, the Fed launched an unprecedented policy of near-zero interest rates and “quantitative easing.” Both failed to produce real economic growth. The latest rate cut is unlikely to increase growth or avert a major economic crisis.
It is not a coincidence that the Fed’s rate cut came along with Congress passing a two-year budget deal that increases our already 22 trillion dollars national debt and suspends the debt ceiling. The increase in government debt increases the pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates artificially low so the federal government’s interest payments do not increase to unsustainable levels.
President Trump’s tax and regulatory policies have had some positive effects on economic growth and job creation. However, these gains are going to be short-lived because they cannot offset the damage caused by the explosion in deficit spending and the Federal Reserve’s resulting monetization of the debt. President Trump has also endangered the global economy by imposing tariffs on imports from the US’s largest trading partners including China. This has resulted in a trade war that is hurting export-driven industries such as agriculture.
President Trump recently imposed more tariffs on Chinese imports, and China responded to the tariffs by devaluing its currency. The devaluation lowers the price consumers pay for Chinese goods, partly offsetting the effect of the tariffs. The US government responded by labeling China a currency manipulator, a charge dripping with hypocrisy since, thanks to the dollar’s world reserve currency status, the US is history’s greatest currency manipulator. Another irony is that China’s action mirrors President Trump’s continuous calls for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
While no one can predict when or how the next economic crisis will occur, we do know the crisis is coming unless, as seems unlikely, the Fed stops distorting the economy by manipulating interest rates (which are the price of money), Congress cuts spending and debt, and President Trump declares a ceasefire in the trade war.
The Federal Reserve’s rate cut failed to stop a drastic fall in the stock market. This is actually good news as it shows that even Wall Street is losing faith in the Federal Reserve’s ability to manage the unmanageable — a monetary system based solely on fiat currency. The erosion of trust in and respect for the Fed is also shown by the interest in cryptocurrency and the momentum behind two initiatives spearheaded by my Campaign for Liberty — passing the Audit the Fed bill and passing state laws re-legalizing gold and silver as legal tender. There is no doubt we are witnessing the last days of not just the Federal Reserve but the entire welfare-warfare system. Those who know the truth must do all they can to ensure that the crisis results in a return to a constitutional republic, true free markets, sound money, and a foreign policy of peace and free trade.
There are enough laws on the books. There’s not a single new law that would change anything. First Trump agreed to ban bump stocks, a stupid argument if there ever was one. By labeling bump stocks “machine guns,” the ATF effectively changed their classification under the 1934 National Firearms Act(NFA) and made them illegal under the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA), a move which retroactively criminalizes their purchase and ownership. By the way, the 1968 GCA was taken from Adolph Hitler’s gun ban.
If Trump signs any new laws, this will drive a huge wedge between him and his supporters. True, there is no one else to vote for, but Trump supporters will not go out in droves as they did in 2016, which could give the election to the Democratic Socialists. If the President backs down on his promises, he will lose…and the left wants our guns, they want them out of our hands, and when the movie, The Hunt, becomes reality even though it’s now been pulled, we won’t have any way of firing back.
As a nation under the U.S. Constitution we are 230 years old. It may surprise readers to learn that for the first 124 of these years we had no federal income tax and handled our expenses quite well. Today the 55% who pay federal income taxes (77.5 million do not) pay nearly a fifth of their income to the federal government. Prior to 1913 one kept what is now taken from them.
How would you spend it if not taken? You would spend the extra fifth of your salary on thousands of items that are made by others as well as services you might like. This not only would enrich your life but it would provide jobs for others making those items or providing those services. Many middle class folks could purchase a new car every other year with what they are forced to give to the federal government.
Would you spend it more wisely than the federal government? Certainly! Most of the money taken from you by the federal government is spent on perpetual war, foreign aid, grants to privileged portions of our society, and endless unconstitutional subsidized programs; the last two categories of which basically take the money of those who produce and redistribute it to those who do not. Even some non-tax payers get income tax refunds—so corrupt is the system.
Of course, those receiving and benefiting from these programs will defend them. But the fact remains that tax monies provide largely government jobs, which are almost entirely consumption jobs (jobs that consume the production of society but produce little consumable). Such jobs cannot produce for public consumption a potato, a carton of milk, or even a can of hair spray. They bring another person to the table to eat, but not another to produce something to eat.
What largely brought about the give-away programs of the Twentieth Century was the now 106-year-old 16th Amendment—the federal income tax. All three 1912 presidential candidates Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, and their respective parties, wanted this financial water faucet that they could turn on at will. With it they could purchase anything—even people.
Prior to 1913 the federal government remained mostly faithful to her grants of power in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which left them with only four powers: to tax, pay the debts, provide for the general welfare, and provide for the common defense. Because the federal government has the inclination to maximize their authority the last two power grants, general welfare and common defense, each had eight qualifiers to harness them more fully. Outside these qualifiers the federal government had no power to tax or spend.
General welfare then meant everyone equally (general), as opposed to “specific welfare” or “privileged welfare” as it is today, targeting those to forfeit and those to receive monies. The Constitution did not deny states, counties, or cities from having such programs, only the federal government. But politicians soon learned that the more they promised to the people, from the money of others, the easier it was to get elected and stay elected.
The problem with the federal government going off the list and funding things clearly not on it was that each time they did so the stronger the inclination to do so again. One minor departure begets another until one notices that what the federal government does has little or no relationship to the list. I ask my students what would happen if they took to kindergarten a lollypop and gave it to one child? What would the others say? Where is mine? Try taking away long provided benefits from a privileged group, as for example food stamps, and see how popular you are with that voting group in the next election.
So why does the government now need a fifth of everything you make and it is still not enough? Answer, because we went off the listed powers of the Constitution and every departure required more taxpayer funding. The solution to less tax is less government. A side benefit is more freedom. The productive classes would not be hurt. Seldom do they qualify for the federally subsidized programs anyway.
The fifth taken from the productive classes would be spent by them creating a haven of jobs for those who wished to work. The cycle of dependency would be drastically reduced. The federal government would no longer be an enabler to those not working. States would decide for themselves what assistance programs they could afford with some states offering more and others less as the Tenth Amendment mandates.
So, how did we cover the expenses of the federal government—even wars—our first 124 years? Products coming into the country were assessed a fee to market in the U.S. called a tariff. We got product producers in other countries to cover our national expenses and thus we were able to spend on ourselves every cent of what the federal government now takes, which inadvertently stimulated the economy. No one should be able to argue that our exceeding $22 trillion national debt is fair, has really worked for any of us, and is a better plan.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College.
“The empires of the future are empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchill
While I’m gratified that so many Americans are at last waking up to the sorry state of our Republic, I have to take issue with the oft-stated notion that America is becoming an empire. On the contrary: America has been an empire for some time now. What is happening to us in terms of our loss of liberties and our government’s increasing aggression, both at home and abroad is not the onset of some new thing. It is, rather, the final stage of an illness that has proven fatal to every people who have ever contracted it—a disease of the mind. For before an empire can be birthed on the world stage it must first be conceived in the minds of men, and the imperial mindset was present in our United States of America from the very beginning.
But how could this be? After all, imperial notions seem far removed—if not entirely antithetical—to American idealism as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. America was conceived in the idea that governments exist in order to protect the rights of individuals, and thus cannot justly exercise power over and above the consent of the governed. Empires, on the other hand, are inherently creatures of force and collectivism; they subvert the rights of individuals in favor of furthering the power of the state. Indeed, the very mention of the word empire conjures up images that are anathema to the classical American mindset: tyrants seated on elaborate thrones, immense standing armies, masses of the common people in servitude (or at least behaving themselves discreetly under the state’s watchful eye), torture chambers, ideological oppression, and rampant decadence.
If we look back on our history with a critical eye, however, I think we’ll notice that imperial ambitions, while not consistent with our core doctrines, are, nonetheless, not as far divorced from our thinking as we would prefer to believe.
The Imperial March
After fighting a revolution to throw off the yoke of an empire, the United States of America began acting, in many ways, as an imperial power itself. President James Monroe effectively made this a matter of policy in 1823 when he articulated his famous “Monroe Doctrine.” The Monroe Doctrine gave the US an actionable interest in the affairs of the entire western hemisphere, and was based on the justification that European maneuverings in the Americas were inherently “dangerous to our peace and safety.” The European nation-states were based on different political systems than our own, Monroe argued; therefore, any expansion on their part in our backyard was a natural threat to us.
Given the relative weakness of the US military at that time in history, the Monroe Doctrine was quite a bold stance. It was indicative of two ideas that would, together, form the cornerstone of American nationalism and, later, militarism: 1) an understanding of the fact that America’s experiment in self-government was fragile, and 2) the fact that Americans were quickly coming to view themselves as the providentially appointed guardians of political righteousness. Journalist John O’Sullivan expressed both ideas in 1845 when he declared that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny”—our clear, divinely appointed mission—to “overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
In 1853, the US government decided that the Pacific trade had also been entrusted to us, and insisted upon using Japan as a refueling stop on the way to China. This in spite of the fact that Japan was a notoriously isolationist nation at that time in its history and wanted nothing to do with us. Secretary of State Daniel Webster had laid out the justification for this it in 1851, when he asserted that the coal in the Japanese islands had been placed there “by the Creator of all things…for the benefit of the human family.” Commodore Matthew Perry was dispatched to explain this to the Japanese, who, upon seeing the guns of Perry’s ships, agreed that perhaps they were being unfair to us after all. They agreed to grant us re-coaling rights with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Then, a few years later in 1858, Perry convinced the Japanese Shogun to sign a “Treaty of Amity and Commerce,” establishing formal diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Once again, Perry’s mission of amity was greatly assisted by the warships he brought with him.
The Nationalist Mindset
There is no doubt in my mind but that Commodore Perry and his superiors believed that they were furthering a noble cause, and this in spite of the fact that they were acting coercively against a people who had done them no harm. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that they were also motivated by the potential for enhancing America’s wealth and prestige in Pacific ventures (in other words, pride and greed), but what must be understood here is that Washington’s brand of nationalism sees no difference between the expansion of American power and the success of American ideals.
Nationalism is, by definition, collectivism; and history demonstrates for us that two things always happen in a collective system: the will of the majority eclipses the rights of individuals, and the majority (or rather, its voice) always assumes the identity of the nation. This makes nationalism fundamentally incompatible with O’Sullivan’s “liberty and federated self-government” in the long term because governments are jealous gods; they will allow no others before them. Where national and regional or local interests collide, as they ultimately must, the former will insist that the latter yield in the name of “the greater good.” Regional and local interests will be dubbed “selfish,” “short-sighted,” and “obstructionist.” Whatever ideals are considered precious will be assumed by the nationalist element, which will tout its own success as equivalent to the success of those ideals, even if, in actuality, its agenda runs contrary to them (the terms “workers’ party” and “revolution of the proletariat” come to mind right away here). Again, the majority, or the voice that claims to represent it, becomes the nation.
This is precisely what happened in our history. An authoritarian, nationalist element eventually gained control of the central government, made its agenda equivalent to the preservation and advancement of “the great experiment of liberty and self-government,” and thereby assumed the moral authority to combat all contrary influences, ostensibly before those influences could destroy the nation itself.
I’m referring, of course, to Abraham Lincoln and his indispensable “war for the Union.”
The True Virginians
According to Lincoln, the Southern states that seceded from the Union weren’t simply trying to go their own way; they were actually trying to destroy America itself. Never mind the fact that secession was not unconstitutional, that it was fully consistent with the principles of self-determination that had led to the creation of the United States of America in the first place, and that the departure of the Southern states would have left the Union fully intact between the remaining states and the government at Washington fully functional. “You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government,” Lincoln informed the Confederacy in his first inaugural address, “while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it’.” The war he inaugurated was, in his terms, “essentially a people’s contest,” a “war for a great national idea, the Union,” a test to see whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” a struggle to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Note that, in spite of the fact that it was Lincoln who was trying to overthrow the expressed will of the Southern people, he nonetheless argued that it was he and his friends in Union blue who were fighting for “government of the people.” The Unionists were the real Americans, the true defenders of liberty and the Constitution. In one amazing instance, Lincoln went so far as to argue that those Virginians who supported secession weren’t even Virginians anymore. In an address to Congress on July 4, 1861, Lincoln remarked:
The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders; and this Government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it. And it has less regret, as the loyal citizens have in due form claimed its protection. Those loyal citizens this Government is bound to recognize and protect as being Virginia.
Suffice it to say that the histories of wars are written by the victors. Lincoln and his fellow nationalists won, overthrowing the “confederated republic” of the Founders and the Constitution with its doctrines of delegated, separated, and reserved powers, in favor of “one nation, indivisible.” This new version of America became the ‘fulfillment’ of the Declaration of Independence (that old joint resolution of secession), a “new birth of freedom”: the realization of what the Founders had really wanted to achieve but were prevented from doing because of selfish, sectional feeling—or so we’re told.
Even commentators who criticize Lincoln for the cruelty of Northern war measures—especially in the last two years of the war—generally agree that things worked out for the best because of him. In his book Lincoln’s Little War, Webb Garrison demonstrates how Lincoln manipulated the events that led to the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter; however, he concludes that the United States could never have become a superpower “if fifty strong and separate states made all the significant decisions,” and that America “became one nation in the real sense of the term” as a result of the war. Writing in the Boston Herald on April 19, 1999, columnist Don Feder compared Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s tactics to those of Abraham Lincoln, but then brushed Lincoln’s atrocities aside with a statement that it all turned out for the best in the end. “Lincoln did what was necessary to preserve the Union,” Feder commented. “America, the greatest force for good in this century, would have been reduced to a basket case if the rebellion had succeeded.”
So forget the fact that Lincoln overthrew the country’s founding principles and waged a brutal war against innocent people; his victory made it possible for us to overthrow regimes that brutalize innocent people in other countries today, and that’s what counts. Such is the majority consensus, based largely in naiveté, I’m afraid. In opposing Southern secession, Lincoln “saved America,” and many would have us believe that America was saved so that it could, in turn, save the world. Thus the success of America’s ideals became inextricably tied to the power and prestige of the United States of America itself, which became, as Don Feder would say, a “force for good.” And who can argue with a force for good?
Indeed, many Americans came to view the country, not merely as a force for “good,” but as the very instrument of God on earth. Americans, in general, had always believed that they were blessed of God, both in their political system and the richness of their land, but Lincoln twisted the idea of God’s involvement with America to suit his own purposes.
The most enduring example of this comes to us in the form of comments he made during his second inaugural address, which was far more religious in tone than his first. In the address, Lincoln suggested that God had brought the war about in order to punish America for slavery, and that it would continue for as long as God saw fit, even though Lincoln himself had brought it about through his scheming and had the power to end it at any time simply by withdrawing his armies from Southern soil. “The Almighty has His own purposes,” Lincoln informed Americans. “As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Unfortunately, Lincoln’s hypocrisy stuck in the American mindset. The war ceased to be a political power struggle, or a matter of national pride, and instead became a crusade between good and evil, brought about by the providence of God Himself. And once that idea was accepted, it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that, because God had started the whole thing, it had all worked out just as He had planned. Lincoln and the North became God’s instrument of justice; thus their victory, and the nationalist ideals that drove it, had the divine seal of approval. Glory, glory, hallelujah.
And of course, it didn’t help anything that Lincoln died as an apparent martyr to his cause, which had the effect of virtually deifying him, and earned him the right to sit in that Temple of Zeus the taxpayers gratefully erected for him in Washington D.C. Even as a child, when I was caught up in the Lincoln mythos, the Lincoln Memorial struck me as somehow wrong. If you have never been there, you cannot entirely appreciate the scale of it. Lincoln sits—literally larger than life—on a great white throne in the midst of an enormous building that resembles a Greek or Roman temple. It’s a strange marriage of biblical and pagan imagery; a kingly, semi-divine construct that would have given George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson heartburn.
Following Lincoln’s (excuse me, God’s) war, American nationalism became a strange mixture of jingoism, ideological protectionism, and an old-fashioned desire for “more,” all combined with a messiah complex. It seems that we threw off the yoke of an empire, not in order to repudiate imperialism, but simply to establish one that was more to our liking. We took over the continent in order to provide room for the “great experiment of liberty and federated self-government,” subduing both treasonous secessionists and red-skinned savages in the process (for the collective good, naturally), policed the neighborhood so that no undesirable elements could move in, and in the process completely altered our mindset and became something those who fought in our revolution would not have recognized.
I take that back; they would indeed have recognized it—they had fought against it, after all.
The War for the American Mind
The empire we see today is a natural extension of Manifest Destiny, carried out on a global stage, driven by a sense of what the ancients referred to as noblesse oblige, a “noble obligation” to civilize the world—or so Washington tells us. Interestingly, our leaders seem to feel that our noble obligation lies along lines defined by natural resource wealth, particularly oil, and may be advanced by less than noble means, as anyone on the other side of the bombs, depleted uranium ammunition, drone strikes, assassinations, and torture can testify. But is this really so surprising? After all, we idolize men who brutalized segments of our own population into submission and then covered it all with the flag and pronounced it good. If we venerate men who did this to our own people, do foreigners really stand any chance of being treated better?
And, of course, we cannot tolerate dissent at home because this “weakens our resolve.” This mentality is summed up nicely in the words of former Attorney General John Ashcroft:
To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends.
Remember: nationalists assume the identity of the entire nation and all of the ideals that it supposedly holds dear, even when their agenda and methods obviously conflict with those ideals. In their minds, America is what they say it is, and they are the true Americans, just as Lincoln once proclaimed that those Virginians who supported the Union were the only true Virginians. Our “national unity” is unity on their terms. “Our resolve” is their resolve. If you are not for them, you are against them. Opposing them is “giving ammunition” to America’s enemies; and if you are arming America’s enemies, then, naturally, you yourself are an enemy.
In light of this, it is useless to talk of rolling back Washington’s empire without confronting the mindset that drives it. Empires are, first and foremost, constructs of the mind, and it is there that they must first be overthrown.
Robert Hawes is the author of One Nation Indivisible? A Study of Secession and the Constitution, in addition to numerous articles on subjects ranging from politics to theology. A native of Northern Virginia, he now lives in South Carolina and is married with three children.
Most people know that the NSA spies on Americans thanks to the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers. But the NSA is just the tip of the surveillance iceberg. State, local and federal agencies have joined together the create a massive surveillance-state using a vast array of intrusive technology.
Federal intelligence agencies, including the NSA, CIA and DEA, collect data without a warrant, analyze it to build profiles on its targets and encourages state and local law enforcement to violate our fundamental right to privacy.
Documents obtained by Reuters in 2013 discussed NSA data sharing with state and local law enforcement. The NSA, passes information through the DEA’s Special Operations Division and it’s not about national security as we are told. They are being used domestically for criminal investigations. In 2013, these are the Snowden leaks, The Washington Post reported the NSA is gathering 5 billion records a day on the locations of cellphones worldwide. This includes data on tens of millions of Americans each year- all without a warrant. In 2018, the Statistical Transparency Report Regarding Use of National Security Authorities showed that the government intercepted metadata from more than 500 million Americans in 2017; a 300 percent increase from 2016.
The three main authorities for surveillance are Section 215 PATRIOT, Section 702 FISA, and Executive Order 12333. Section 215 was passed after 9/11 and allows the NSA to gather “any tangible thing” from third parties relevant to foreign intelligence. This includes bulk data on Americans as well: phone calls, data and texts. Police were granted new, sweeping surveillance powers to “fight terrorism” following 09/11 events. Whatever the cause of the events, the result is a suspect society where you have to prove your innocence and the monitoring of everything we do in real-time.
Section 702 FISA was passed in 2008 to legalize GW Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program and deals with internet traffic data. EO12333 was issued in 1981 and serves as the primary authority for spying. It governs electronic surveillance that the NSA conducts overseas and allows bulk collection of Americans metadata. Keep in mind this is only what we know publically. There are likely many other spying tools we do not know about. For example, automatic license plate readers were in place years before it was public knowledge and in the case of Section 702 FISA that law legalized an already active wiretapping program.
A note on 215: in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was using this authority to collect American’s phone records in bulk. In 2015, the Freedom Act replaced 215 so that the NSA can gather phone data on suspected terrorists. It’s not just phone calls that are being gathered. Section 702 allows the FBI and other agencies to use bulk data collected during surveillance of foreign targets in domestic cases. Section 702, under downstream surveillance U.S. intelligence agencies go to tech companies like google and force the companies to turn over data on identified selectors, which are very broad. In upstream surveillance, the NSA partners such as ATT tap into fiber optic cables and copy the internet traffic data.
STATE AND LOCAL AGENCIES: THE BACKBONE OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
The NSA gets most of the attention when it comes to government spying, but state and local agencies are the backbone of the U.S. surveillance state. They collect reams of data using spy-gear funded by the federal government and then share this information across the country. Reams of data ends up in federal databases thanks to the efforts of state and local police.
The feds set up and facilitate this massive surveillance network.
Through fusion centers, state and local law enforcement agencies act as information recipients from federal departments under the Information Sharing Environment (ISE). These include the Director of National Intelligence, which covers 17 other federal agencies, including NSA. In other words, this serves as a channel for the sharing of warrantless surveillance. This information is shared between federal, state and local law enforcement and includes social network spying and CCTV cameras. The Department of Homeland Security funds 79 fusion centers across the U.S. They were created to combat terrorism, but are being used for domestic spying with no limits or transparency whatsoever. Despite these issues, congress reauthorized FISA 702 for another six years. The lesson? We should not count on Congress to limit federal spying.
Fusion centers are partnerships between public and private entities, including local, state and federal law enforcement. They “anticipate, prevent and monitor criminal activity and other hazards, then distribute their findings.” These centers research threats to government and public order, terrorism of all kinds and any international incidents with potential local impact. These centers were largely created in the years prior to 9/11. In 2012, a white paper was submitted to the House of Representatives. “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission,” written by Michael Chertoff, detailed the DHS evolving mission away from fighting terrorism toward administering a domestic intelligence agency that would integrate local and state law enforcement into one unit. This paper discussed shifting the focus away from “foreign terrorism” to “specific homeward areas.” The paper also talks about building a DHS/police hybrid agency that can monitor Americans in any town and prevent threats. The goal of the fusion center is to detect and prevent criminal and terrorist activity. These centers assist law enforcement in the prevention and response to crime and terrorism.
ALPR
Automatic license plate readers establish patterns of behavior for profiling. By tracking where you visit, how often and with whom law enforcement can learn a lot about you. ALPR’s track your movements in real-time, using high-speed cameras with character recognition technologies capable of quickly scanning license plates. They can be set up on check your speed devices, in parking lots and on police cruisers. We know that data gathered by a local sheriff ends up in national databases accessible by state, local and federal law enforcement. The information is also shared downstream from the federal to the state and local levels. For example, the Omaha police department knows where I am driving thanks to license plate readers. Accurate profiles are generated and stored for law enforcement to use based on this technology. In the case of license plate readers, this was happening in secret years before the public discovered it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation released records from 200 agencies amounting to 2.5 billion license plate scans between 2016-17. 99.5% of the plates scanned had no suspicion of a crime but the data was being gathered. These agencies shared this with 160-800 other agencies.
STINGRAYS
These devices simulate cell phone towers, connecting to devices within range of a cell tower and intercepting the communications from it before sending it out to its recipient. Privacy rights advocates say that these can never be used in line with the 4th Amendment because the data from all devices in range are collected instead of targeted collection of single users. This gives law enforcement the perfect cover to sweep up our communications and track our location –without our knowledge and with no limits. The federal government funds the majority of surveillance programs, and stingrays are no exception. These technologies are funded federally and require the agencies using them to sign non-disclosure agreements. As the Baltimore Sun reported in 2015, a Baltimore detective refused to answer questions on the stand during a trial citing a non-disclosure agreement. This means that rather than reveal the methods of how intelligence was being gathered, prosecutors instructed the detective to drop the case. If they have nothing to fear, what do they have to hide? That is what we are told
PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION
Through parallel construction, police build cases based on illegally obtained, warrantless data collected by the NSA and other federal agencies. The feds share information gathered without a warrant and direct the police to make arrests. Investigators build the case along with normal police techniques, getting warrants for information they already have. This creates the appearance of a legitimate case and helps keep secret surveillance programs hidden. State and local law enforcement agencies regularly provide surveillance data to the federal government through the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) and fusion centers. They gather data from ALPR’s, stingrays, drones and facial recognition software. Through the ISE, the feds share and tap into vast amounts of information gathered at the state and local level. This allows for the storing, tracking and monitoring of many Americans. The feds gather phone calls, emails, web history and texts on millions of Americans every day. Did I mention that this happens without a warrant, probable cause and public knowledge.
Founder of IL Tenthers working on privacy rights protections in illinois
Advocating declarations not petitions. Its important to have allies, but more important to have actionable goals.
Place one foot in front of the other and never lose sight of your principles. Liberty is never given it is earned, please contact me with ideas or debate.
Every July 4, Americans throw themselves a party to celebrate our Independence Day. But while the date is heavy on flags, fireworks, and red, white and blue-themed BBQ, understanding the reasons why America’s founding is uniquely worthy of celebration often gets little attention. However, rather than bypassing the principles and ideals involved in order to move directly to celebrations, we would be well-served by giving June 12 a little more thought, as well. That was the day the Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned by George Mason, was ratified by the Fifth Virginia Convention in 1776. And it has pride of place as the first of several declarations of rights in the era — weeks before the Declaration of Independence and well before our Bill of Rights and the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Mason’s defense of individual rights as “the basis and foundation of government,” which the Marquis de Condorcet called “the first Bill of Rights to merit the name,” and an updated version of which is still in effect in Virginia, profoundly influenced both our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights — our rationale for liberty and the limitations on government designed to protect that liberty in practice — deserves more attention. Clinton Rossiter called it “among the world’s most memorable triumphs in applied political theory.” Charles Maynes wrote that, Mason’s revolutionary step was…reversing, in writing and in a supreme governmental document, the traditional relationship between citizen and state. Throughout history it had been the citizen who owed duties to the state, which in turn might bestow certain rights on the citizen…Mason argued that the state had to observe certain citizens’ rights that could not be violated under any circumstances. Mason thus set the United States apart from past constitutional practices.
From Declaration of Rights to Declaration of Independence It is clear that Thomas Jefferson had access to the Virginia Bill of Rights in drafting the Declaration of Independence. He was asked to write a draft on June 11, and probably didn’t begin writing until June 12, the day the Virginia Bill of Rights was approved. The draft text had also been published in different newspapers on June 6, 8, and 12. And then there are the close parallels between the two. One cannot read the central second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence without hearing echoes of Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights. That is why it is no wonder Jefferson, who called Mason “the wisest man of his generation,” wrote in an 1823 letter that, “I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before.” Consider the most striking examples.
Section 1: That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, or which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity, namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Section 2: That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.
Section 3: That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people…And that when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to those principles, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
Section 6: Men…cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, not bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented.
Section 15: That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
From Declaration of Rights to Bill of Rights As clear as the connections of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights to the Declaration of Independence are, those connecting it to the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, are even stronger. As Raymond Polin wrote, “we may regard the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and especially Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, and XIX, as ‘necessary’ to implementation of the ideas stated in the Declaration.” Polin points out that the original articles of the Constitution dealing with separation of branches, republican government and regular elections to legislative and executive offices also reflect Mason’s earlier work. But even more important, as he put it, “provisions that are present in the First Ten Amendments are contained in the Virginia Bill of Rights as well, at times in the very same words,” including Amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and
8. But the process of getting to that point was far from smooth.
Bills or declarations of rights became popular after the Declaration of Independence. They were adopted in some form by five colonies in 1776, and in every state by 1783. However, the Constitutional Convention did not adopt one. As a result, Mason was one of only three delegates to the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the final document, most importantly because, “there is no Declaration of Rights, and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitution of the several states, the Declaration of Rights in the separate states are no security.” But his refusal to sign, the objections he offered, and his opposition to ratification without a bill of rights, while causing no small contention, were seminal in creating the Bill of Rights, which Raymond Polin called “the capstone of American constitutionalism,” in 1791.
Because of his recognition that rights did not originate from government, but that liberty instead requires tight constraints on government, George Mason deserves more attention. After all, according to Jeff Broadwater, to the founding generation, “only Washington ranked higher in public esteem.” In Robert Rutland’s words, “His ideas became permeating facts” at America’s founding. They need to again permeate Americans’ political thoughts if we are to revive the liberty he helped create. George Mason ideas and words were far more influential at America’s founding than in American’s minds today. He saw what government must avoid as more central than what it must do if it is to actually advance our welfare and tried his best to implement that vision, in full recognition of the dangers faced. As he put it, Happiness and prosperity are now within our reach; but to attain and preserve them must depend upon our own wisdom and virtue…Frequent interference with private property and contracts, retrospective laws destructive of all public faith, as well as confidence between man and man, and flagrant violations of the Constitution must disgust the best and wisest part of the community, occasion a general depravity of manners, bring the legislature into contempt, and finally produce anarchy and public convulsion.
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read.
NOTE: This article was originally published at Mises.org and is reposted here under a Creative Commons 4.0 license
Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom!
Writing as Candidus in the Boston Gazette on Oct. 14, 1771, Samuel Adams recognized an important and timeless truth. Turning a blind eye to an attack on liberty only guarantees that more attacks will come in the future.
The same goes for violations of the Constitution, which the Founders often referred to as “usurpations,” or the exercise of “arbitrary power.”
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” [emphasis added]
Here’s something that shouldn’t be surprising: Jefferson was right.
But turning things around from a government with tens of thousands of unconstitutional “laws,” regulations, rules and orders on the books isn’t going to happen in a single step either.
Let me be blunt. Anyone promising a silver bullet is lying to you. It’s going to take a lot of work and thousands of steps forward to make a stand for the Constitution and liberty.
While the odds are certainly against us at this stage, we can take comfort in the fact that we have a lot of amazing advice – successful advice – from the Founders and Old Revolutionaries.
Take this, for example, which you can find on most pages of our website, on official TAC membership cards, and more:
“Concordia res parvae crescunt.”
Written by John Dickinson in response to the Townshend Acts of 1767, it’s a Latin phrase which means “small things grow great by concord.” And it’s something we value immensely every single day here at the Tenth Amendment Center.
BACKGROUND
In May 1765, when most attention was being paid to the hated Stamp Act, King George III gave Royal Assent to the Quartering Act, which required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided and paid for by the colonies.
If those barracks were too small to house all the British soldiers, then the colonies or the specific localities in question were required to accommodate them in local “inns, livery stables, ale-houses, victualling-houses, and the houses of sellers of wine.”
And should there still be soldiers without accommodation after all these “publick houses” were filled, the colonies were then required to “take, hire and make fit” for these soldiers, “such and so many uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns or other buildings, as shall be necessary” to house the rest.
However, the New York colonial assembly didn’t like being commandeered to provide and pay to house British troops. So they refused to comply with the law.
More than two years later, the first of the Townshend Acts, the New York Restraining Act, suspended the assembly and governor of New York by prohibiting them from passing any new bills until they agreed to comply with the Quartering Act 1765.
In effect, this left all decision-making outside the colony.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The most influential response to the acts came from John Dickinson, widely known as “the Penman of the Revolution.” Opposing the new Acts, he wrote a series of twelve essays known as “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.”
In the first of his “Letters,” Dickinson spent time discussing the New York Restraining Act. He wrote:
“Whoever seriously considers the matter, must perceive that a dreadful stroke is aimed at the liberty of these colonies. I say, of these colonies; for the cause of one is the cause of all. If the parliament may lawfully deprive New York of any of her rights, it may deprive any, or all the other colonies of their rights; and nothing can possibly so much encourage such attempts, as a mutual inattention to the interests of each other. To divide, and thus to destroy, is the first political maxim in attacking those, who are powerful by their union.
He continued on to say that, in essence, the rightful response at that moment would have been for other colonial assemblies to at least pass non-binding resolutions informing Parliament that the act was a violation of rights and that it should be repealed.
Why? His answer came through clearly at the end of this first letter, where signed off with that Latin phrase mentioned above, Concordia res parvae crescunt.
Small things grow great by concord.
STEP BY STEP
In many ways, today’s federal government has suspended the legislative power of state assemblies by assuming control over powers never delegated to it in the Constitution.
Politicians in congress and the executive branch – and the lobbyists that benefit financially from their unconstitutional acts – are all too happy to utilize this wealth of power.
For far too long, people have stood idly by. They’ve put all their time, energy and money into “voting the bums out” with the hope that a new crop of federal politicians would ride in and save the day.
But, while new bums have come and gone – and come and gone, and come and gone – the day has yet to be saved.
Pushing off the yoke of the most powerful government in the history of the world is not something that’s going to happen in one fell swoop. This is something that Dickinson and many others recognized early on.
“Great Britain,” they say, “is too powerful to contend with; she is determined to oppress us; it is in vain to speak of right on one side, when there is power on the other; when we are strong enough to resist we shall attempt it; but now we are not strong enough, and therefore we had better be quiet; it signifies nothing to convince us that our rights are invaded when we cannot defend them; and if we should get into riots and tumults about the late act, it will only draw down heavier displeasure upon us.”
Today, just as in the pre-Revolutionary times, many people are afraid of upsetting the status quo. So they sit idly by – and urge others to the same
Dickinson’s response?
Are these men ignorant that usurpations, which might have been successfully opposed at first, acquire strength by continuance, and thus become irresistible?
He was far from alone.
Samuel Adams, for example, urged the same:
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.
If we stand by and do nothing we absolutely know what the result will be.
More importantly, no matter how much the odds appear to be against us, it’s our duty to do what’s right. For us at the Tenth Amendment Center, doing what’s right is pretty straightforward:
The Constitution. Every issue, every time. No exceptions, no excuses.
Step-by-step we’re working to stand for the Constitution and liberty.
Today in history, on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon slammed shut the “gold window” and eliminated the last vestige of the gold standard.
By executive order, Nixon uncoupled gold from its fixed $35 price and suspended the ability of foreign banks to directly exchange dollars for gold. Nixon promised the action would be temporary in order to “defend the dollar against the speculators,” but this turned out to be a lie. The president’s move permanently and completely severed the dollar from gold and turned it into a pure fiat currency.
Nixon’s order was the end of a path off the gold standard that started during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. June 5, 1933, marked the beginning of a slow death of the dollar when Congress enacted a joint resolution erasing the right of creditors in the United States to demand payment in gold. The move was the culmination of other actions taken by Roosevelt that year.
In March 1933, the president prohibited banks from paying out or exporting gold, and in April of that same year, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102. It was touted as a measure to stop hoarding, but was, in reality, a massive confiscation scheme. The order required private citizens, partnerships, associations and corporations to turn in all but small amounts of gold to the Federal Reserve at an exchange rate of $20.67 per ounce. In 1934, the government’s fixed price for gold was increased to $35 per ounce. This effectively increased the value of gold on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet by 69 percent.
The reason behind Roosevelt’s executive order and the congressional joint resolution was to remove constraints on inflating the money supply. The Federal Reserve Act required all Federal Reserve notes have 40 percent gold backing. But the Fed was low on gold and up against the limit. By increasing its gold stores through the confiscation of private gold holdings, and declaring a higher exchange rate, the Fed could circulate more notes.
While American citizens were legally prohibited from redeeming dollars for gold, foreign governments maintained that privilege. In the 1960s, the Federal Reserve initiated an inflationary monetary policy to help monetize massive government spending for the Vietnam War and Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” With the dollar losing value due to these inflationary policies, foreign governments began to redeem dollars for gold.
This is exactly how a gold standard is supposed to work. It puts limits on the amount the money supply can grow and constrains the government’s ability to spend. If the government “prints” too much money, other countries will begin to redeem the devaluing currency for gold. This is what was happening in the 1960s. As gold flowed out of the U.S. Treasury, concern grew that the country’s gold holdings could be completely depleted.
Instead of insisting on fiscal and monetary discipline, Nixon simply severed the dollar from its last ties to gold, allowing the central bank to inflate the money supply without restraint.
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.”
This was also a lie.
According to the Consumer Price Index data released by the Bureau Labor of Statistics, the dollar has lost more than 80 percent of its value since Nixon’s fateful decision. Meanwhile, the dollar value of gold has gone from $35 an ounce to about $1,500.
By every measure—including stagnating wages and rising costs—things have been going downhill for the American middle class since the early 1970s. August 15, 1971, to be exact. This is the date President Nixon killed the last remnants of the gold standard. Since then, the dollar has been a pure fiat currency. This allows the Fed to print as many dollars as it pleases. And—without the discipline imposed by some form of a gold standard—it does precisely that. The U.S money supply has exploded 2,106 percent higher since 1971. The rejection of sound money is the primary reason inflation has eaten up wage growth since the early 1970s—and the primary reason the cost of living has exploded.”
Practically speaking, this means that if you stashed an ounce of gold worth $35 alongside thirty-five one-dollar bills under your bed in 1971. Today, you would be sitting on gold that would buy you an expensive tailored suit. The $35 in cash couldn’t get you a pack of fancy boxer shorts.
In a 2017 article, financial guru Jim Grant explained the importance of a gold standard and how it restrains the power of government.
What was the gold standard, exactly — this thing that the professors dismiss so airily today? A self-respecting member of the community of gold-standard nations defined its money as a weight of bullion. It allowed gold to enter and leave the country freely. It exchanged bank notes to gold, and vice versa, at a fixed and inviolable rate. The people, not the authorities, decided which form of money was best.
“The gold standard was a hard task master, all right. You couldn’t devalue your way out of trouble. You couldn’t run up a big domestic budget deficit. The central bank of a gold-standard country (if there was a central bank) was charged with preserving the convertibility of the currency and, in a pinch, serving as lender of last resort to needy commercial banks. Growth, employment and price stability took their own course. And if, in a financial panic or a business-cycle downturn, gold fled the country, it was the duty of the central bank to establish a rate of interest that called the metal home. In the throes of a crisis, interest rates would likely go up, not down.”
Grant wrote that the reason the gold standard is so often demeaned by modern economists and politicians is because, “The modern sensibility quakes at the rigor of such a system.”
In effect, the gold standard replaced by another standard. Grant calls it the “Ph.D. standard,” a system run by politicians and central planners.
That system features monetary oversight by former university economics faculty — the Ph.D. standard, let’s call it. The ex-professors buy bonds with money they whistle into existence (“quantitative easing”), tinker with interest rates, and give speeches about their intentions to buy bonds and tinker with interest rates (“forward guidance”).
This is exactly what politicians like Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump wanted — the ability to spend without restraint and grow government with no limits. The result: massive national debt and devalued currency that buys the average person less and less every year.
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 Grant notes, ‘The Ph.D. standard is … a political institution. It is the financial counterpart to the philosophy of statism.’
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
“It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”—Journalist Celisa Calacal
Here’s what we’ve learned about the government’s gun violence since Ferguson, according to The Washington Post: If you’re a black American, you’ve got a greater chance of being shot by police. If you’re an unarmed black man, you’re four times more likely to be killed by police than an unarmed white man. Most people killed by police are young men. Since 2015, police have shot and killed an average of 3 people per day. More than 2,500 police departments have shot and killed at least one person since 2015. And while the vast majority of people shot and killed by police are armed, their weapons ranged from guns to knives to toyguns.
Clearly, the U.S. government is not making America any safer.
Indeed, the government’s gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter.
In Chicago, a SWAT team—wearing “army fatigues with black cloth covering their faces and wearing goggles,” armed with automatic rifles, and throwing flash-bang grenades—crashed through the doors of a suburban home and proceeded to storm into bedrooms, holding the children of the household at gunpoint. One child, 13-year-old Amir, was “accidentally” shot in the knee by police while sitting on his bed.
In St. Louis, Missouri, a SWAT team on a mission to deliver an administrative warrant carried out a no-knock raid that ended with police kicking in the homeowner’s front door, and shooting and killing her dog—all over an unpaid gas bill. Taxpayers will have to find $750,000 to settle the lawsuit arising over the cops’ overzealous tactics.
In South Carolina, a 62-year-old homeowner was shot four times through his front door by police who were investigating a medical-assist alarm call that originated from a cell phone inside the home. Dick Tench, believing his house was being broken into, was standing in the foyer of his home armed with a handgun when police, peering through the front door, fired several shots through the door, hitting Tench in the pelvis and the aortic artery. Tench survived, but the bullet lodged in his pelvis will stay there for life.
In Kansas, a SWAT team, attempting to carry out a routine search warrant (the suspect had already been arrested), showed up at a residence around dinnertime, dressed in tactical gear with weapons drawn, and hurled a flash-bang grenade into the house past the 68-year-old woman who was in the process of opening the door to them and in the general direction of a 2-year-old child.
These are just a few recent examples among hundreds this year alone.
Curiously enough, in the midst of the finger-pointing over the latest round of mass shootings, Americans have been so focused on debating who or what is responsible for gun violence—the guns, the gun owners, the Second Amendment, the politicians, or our violent culture—that they have overlooked the fact that the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and their liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.
Violence has become our government’s calling card, starting at the top and trickling down, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents.
The government even exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world’s largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world for too long now. Controlling more than 50 percent of the global weaponry market, the U.S. has sold or donated weapons to at least 96 countries in the past five years, including the Middle East. The U.S. also provides countries such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Iraq with grants and loans through the Foreign Military Financing program to purchase military weapons.
While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics.
In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become routine parts of America’s day-to-day life, a byproduct of the rapid militarization of law enforcement over the past several decades.
Over the course of 30 years, police officers in jack boots holding assault rifles have become fairly common in small town communities across the country. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveal, “Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Does this sound like a country under martial law?
You want to talk about gun violence? While it still technically remains legal for the average citizen to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at and killed by police.
You don’t even have to have a gun or a look-alike gun, such as a BB gun, in your possession to be singled out and killed by police.
There are countless incidents that happen every day in which Americans are shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, or challenge an order.
Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.
With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, and all the government does is shrug, and promise to do better, all the while the cops are granted qualified immunity.
Killed for standing in a “shooting stance.” In California, police opened fire on and killed a mentally challenged—unarmed—black man within minutes of arriving on the scene, allegedly because he removed a vape smoking device from his pocket and took a “shooting stance.”
Killed for carrying a baseball bat. Responding to a domestic disturbance call, Chicago police shot and killed 19-year-old college student Quintonio LeGrier who had reportedly been experiencing mental health problems and was carrying a baseball bat around the apartment where he and his father lived.
Killed for opening the front door. Bettie Jones, who lived on the floor below LeGrier, was also fatally shot—this time, accidentally—when she attempted to open the front door for police.
Killed for running towards police with a metal spoon. In Alabama, police shot and killed a 50-year-old man who reportedly charged a police officer while holding “a large metal spoon in a threatening manner.”
Killed for running while holding a tree branch. Georgia police shot and killed a 47-year-old man wearing only shorts and tennis shoes who, when first encountered, was sitting in the woods against a tree, only to start running towards police holding a stick in an “aggressive manner.”
Killed for crawling around naked. Atlanta police shot and killed an unarmed man who was reported to have been “acting deranged, knocking on doors, crawling around on the ground naked.” Police fired two shots at the man after he reportedly started running towards them.
Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey. Donnell Thompson, a mentally disabled 27-year-old described as gentle and shy, was shot and killed after police—searching for a carjacking suspect reportedly wearing similar clothing—encountered him lying motionless in a neighborhood yard. Police “only” opened fire with an M4 rifle after Thompson first failed to respond to their flash bang grenades and then started running after being hit by foam bullets.
Killed for driving while deaf. In North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed 29-year-old Daniel K. Harris—who was deaf—after Harris initially failed to pull over during a traffic stop.
Killed for being homeless. Los Angeles police shot an unarmed homeless man after he failed to stop riding his bicycle and then proceeded to run from police.
Killed for brandishing a shoehorn. John Wrana, a 95-year-old World War II veteran, lived in an assisted living center, used a walker to get around, and was shot and killed by police who mistook the shoehorn in his hand for a 2-foot-long machete and fired multiple beanbag rounds from a shotgun at close range.
Killed for holding a garden hose. California police were ordered to pay $6.5 million after they opened fire on a man holding a garden hose, believing it to be a gun. Douglas Zerby was shot 12 times and pronounced dead on the scene.
Killed for calling 911. Justine Damond, a 40-year-old yoga instructor, was shot and killed by Minneapolis police, allegedly because they were startled by a loud noise in the vicinity just as she approached their patrol car. Damond, clad in pajamas, had called 911 to report a possible assault in her neighborhood.
Killed for looking for a parking spot. Richard Ferretti, a 52-year-old chef, was shot and killed by Philadelphia police who had been alerted to investigate a purple Dodge Caravan that was driving “suspiciously” through the neighborhood.
Shot seven times for peeing outdoors. Eighteen-year-old Keivon Young was shot seven times by police from behind while urinating outdoors. Young was just zipping up his pants when he heard a commotion behind him and then found himself struck by a hail of bullets from two undercover cops. Allegedly officers mistook Young—5’4,” 135 lbs., and guilty of nothing more than taking a leak outdoors—for a 6’ tall, 200 lb. murder suspect whom they later apprehended. Young was charged with felony resisting arrest and two counts of assaulting a peace officer.
This is what passes for policing in America today, folks, and it’s only getting worse.
In every one of these scenarios, police could have resorted to less lethal tactics.
They could have acted with reason and calculation instead of reacting with a killer instinct.
They could have attempted to de-escalate and defuse whatever perceived “threat” caused them to fear for their lives enough to react with lethal force.
That police instead chose to fatally resolve these encounters by using their guns on fellow citizens speaks volumes about what is wrong with policing in America today, where police officers are being dressed in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”
Remember, to a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.
Violence begets violence: until we start addressing the U.S. government’s part in creating, cultivating and abetting a culture of violence, we will continue to be a nation plagued by violence in our homes, in our schools, on our streets and in our affairs of state, both foreign and domestic.
The impulse to turn everything into a federal case – even something a personal as an obscene finger gesture – flips the middle finger at the political system the founders created.
Whether you agree with the behavior or not, the “right” to wave your middle finger at police officers has been declared expression protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Debra Cruise-Gulyas was stopped by Officer Matthew Wayne Minard in Taylor, Michigan, back in 2017; at that time, Minard cited her for a non-moving violation. As she drove away, Cruise-Gulyas waved her middle finger at Officer Minard, who responded by pulling her over a second time; at this point, he revised her citation to a moving violation.
At issue is whether the second stop was lawful. To be so within the constitutional system as originally intended, this woman’s expression must be protected by the laws and the constitution of the State of Michigan — not the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. But predictably, all of the analysis in the media has turned to the following issue: is waving the middle finger at a police officer speech protected by the U.S. Constitution?
Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit answered in the affirmative. He wrote in his opinion that “fits of rudeness or lack of gratitude may violate the Golden Rule. But that doesn’t make them illegal or for that matter punishable.” He also explained that “Any reasonable officer would know that a citizen who raises her middle finger engages in speech protected by the First Amendment.”
Constitutional History
The First Amendment reads, in relevant part: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…” Taken absent any historical context, (and ignoring the very first word — Congress) the Court’s opinion is in conformance with mainstream interpretations of Constitutional guarantees and is celebrated as such. But is this interpretation in conformance with the document as proposed to and ratified by the States?
The powers delegated to Congress by the States are enumerated in Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. Speech, religion, the press, arms, searches and seizures, procedural due process, for example, were left out of the main body of the Constitution. Fearing the general government would tread beyond the powers specifically delegated to it, some States refused to ratify unless changes (amendments) were added to guarantee their powers and the rights of individuals would not be usurped. A Bill of Rights was added, not to guarantee, grant or protect the rights included therein, but to gain the confidence in the people that the new government would not encroach upon them.
Many people are not aware that there is a preamble to the Bill of Rights, which states, in part, the following:
“The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.” (emphasis added)
Accordingly, the behavior at issue in this case, considered speech, is clearly outside the delegated power of the general government; meaning, this matter is historically outside the purview of the federal judiciary.
Because the general government was prohibited from legislating or reviewing such laws, the Tenth Amendment becomes operative, and it states the following:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
James Madison, who proposed a strong central government at the Philadelphia Convention, after his Virginia Plan was rejected outright, explained the role of the new government as follows in his Federalist #45:
“The powers delegated to the proposed Constitution to the federal govern, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite…The powers reserved to the several states will…concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the states.”
The Bill of Rights was never understood to be applicable to the States. There is no historical evidence to support this notion. Even ardent nationalist John Marshall, in the 1833 case Barron v. Baltimore admitted such when he said that the first ten “amendments contain no expression indicating an intention to apply to them to the state governments. This court cannot so apply them.”
The Incorporation Doctrine
In 1925, in Gitlow v. New York, the United States Supreme Court magically “found” the authority to apply the Bill of Rights against the States supposedly hidden away in the 14th Amendment. This creation of law by the Court is both problematic and unsupported by historical records. The amendment was proposed by the 39th Congress. It did not intend incorporation of the Bill of Rights against the States. However, by this time, the Progressive era was in full swing and the Supreme Court was on a mission to rewrite the Constitution, diminishing the “separation of powers” between the States and the general government. The system created was “federal” and not “national” in nature, meaning the States were to work in unison with, not be subservient to the general government. The incorporation of the Bill of Rights was made up by a federal court, and has been the chief mechanism through with a “one-size-fits-all” form of government, with all rights and powers emanating from Washington, D.C., has arisen.
Constitutional Law
As I have said many times before, Constitutional law is not the same thing as Constitutional history; the former is the creation of mostly left-leaning federal judges who interpret the document to support the policy outcomes they desire. Typically, this results in powers the states never delegated being brought within the realm of control of the national government. This in contravention to the purpose and intent of the document as ratified — meaning, that which the states and the people through their state delegates consented.
Applying History to the Present Case
The general government was empowered to punish three crimes only: treason, piracy on the high seas, and counterfeiting. Accordingly, pursuant to Article I, section 8, the Bill of Rights, and the intent of the 14th Amendment, the ruling of the 6th District court is incorrect; in fact, they never should have heard it in the first place.
As stated above, the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to instill confidence in the public that only specifically-listed powers fall under the authority of the general government; it is more accurately a bill of restrictions. To say the natural rights expressed therein are “Constitutional” rights ignores the fact that the politicians take the opportunity to regulate them, even if they were prohibited from doing so from the very beginning. If properly understood as restrictions, then there is no latitude for Congress to usurp these rights.
How police and the citizens of the states interact, and how such conduct is to be regulated is outside the role of general government. Taking such a case to the federal judiciary is also extremely risky; imagine if they ruled to the contrary, and we end up with an opinion that affects the rights and ability of every person on this continental land mass to express themselves, with or without dignity and respect.
If we accept the notion that states and their citizens are not capable of dealing with such issues internally, without the wisdom of the federal judiciary, then we have accepted the notion that we are utterly incapable of self-governance. Worse yet, we have surrendered our revolutionary legacy.
Suzanne is a licensed attorney who quit her practice to raise her children. In 2013, she left California to enjoy the peace and freedoms available in a remote location in the mountains of North Eastern Utah. She makes radio appearances, hosts a show and speaks on principles of federalism, history, and liberty. She can be reached at suzanne@littel.com https://www.suzannecsherman.com/
