RGV Republican Liberty Club

As the dissatisfactions of Americans with their national government grow, so does the likelihood of the breakup of the United States. I believe that most Americans can improve their well-being by ending the national government, that is, ending the Union. I believe that this goal should shape politics if politics is to do much good.

I don’t think Americans are going to be the first people in the modern era to initiate a large-scale anarchy. But Americans might conceivably move back to a federal form of government something like that under the Articles of Confederation. If so, the problem is how to proceed. Many Americans feel (and are) trapped and thwarted by government power.

I see two paths. Americans can do this either acting as individuals formed into a body politic of 300 million Americans or as 50 body politics organized by state. I think action by state has a better chance of success.

To act as one body, Americans would have to alter their Constitution. The divisions among Americans make this highly unlikely. Even if it were pursued, the results would be highly uncertain.

Yes, indeed. The key to success on a large scale is mobilization and activation. Individuals ranting and raving about wrongdoings are portrayed negatively in the public and only get a 10 second soundbyte on the evening news. They aren’t taken seriously and assisted in their dilemma. Why do so when they can be paraded about as a malicious Angry White Man or crazed Right Wing Fringer “bitterly clinging to their guns and religion” as the illustrious BHO would say. They don’t have much to say about their own dilemma because they are ignored by the larger system itself. Good luck trying to get your point across to a newsie. Even if you find a sympathetic ear, you can oh so easily have the entirety of your story demolished by editorial oversight. Far too many people with an ounce of power over something have an agenda to Lord it over everyone else. Just ask a Mall Cop.

Rozeff makes another good point that

A tax revolt that works from and through the state legislatures directly undermines the Union. It directly challenges the power of Congress to tax. That’s a far stronger political platform for restructuring the United States.

which is certainly true, but is a concept so far down the road to most Americans that they haven’t even thought that far ahead. Mostly, they are concerned with just trying to live their lives and minimize Government intrusion and tyranny into it, rather than proactively attempting to fix what is broken within it.

Outright secession is one political measure in a spectrum of possible actions by which one or more states stand up to the U.S. government. Nullification is another. Withdrawal from the banking system is another. A separate payments system at the state level is a fourth. Refusal to obey any of hundreds of U.S. directives is a fifth. The formation of alliances among states is another.

Rozeff makes some points of interest here and almost blows right by them. Secession is certainly an interesting topic of conversation these days. What with Governor Rick Perry making allusions to it (and being attributed to a lot more – wishful thinking on someone’s part) and more than just the local so-called rednecks (one of my local Border Patrol agents) riding around with ‘Secede’ stickers affixed to their vehicles. The topic has gotten to the level of interest in the mainstream that much of the opposition is scoffing at it as illegal. Well, we know what that means. As Gandhi stated, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.” Well if this is true, then the Secessionists are probably transversing from stage 2 to stage 3…

Nullification is another topic worthy of discussion. These United States are a collective of 50 individual States (as well as some Protectorates and other Holdings which aren’t quite “states”) which incorporated a Federal Government to oversee a very specific and limited set of Powers. The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights explicitly enumerate a finite list of Rights and privileges thereon. Now, the States authorized themselves an Out when it comes to laws that the Federal Government comes up with. Normally, the various states would be beholden to Federal laws, except whereby they are outside the scope of the explicitly delegated Powers of the Federal Government. Nullification is the Right of the state in question to nullify, or invalidate the Federal law because of it’s Unconstitutionality. This is a topic that most citizens don’t understand. However, it is something they really need to understand, because it goes to the heart of an overpowering and tyrannical Federal Government. When all legal means of redress are subverted, how does one seek satisfaction?

Next we have the topic of withdrawal from the banking system. This is yet again a difficult topic to discuss due to the vast majority of people’s misunderstanding of it. When you ask the man on the street about our banking system, he almost assuredly talks about saving and checking accounts. He thinks that the bank holds your money to loan to other people at higher interest so it makes money and can pay you smaller amounts of interest. This is a bald faced lie. Their are two types of banking prevalent to this conversation, Central Banking and Fractional Reserve Banking. The former is the macro system while the latter is the micro system. Central Banking in short, is ‘Money as Debt’ which is why we in America have a debt-based economy. It’s all about pushing debt around and debt management. You take on an amount of debt and pay it back with interest. That’s how money is made here. The problem with this is that the debt grows from interest and can never be paid back because their is not enough money in existence to pay it back. This eventually leads to bankruptcy of someone or something. On the large scale, the Federal Government doesn’t even print it’s own money! They buy it from the Federal Reserve through the issue of Bonds in the Bond Market. It is distributed in turn to the regional Federal Reserve branches and then to local banks in said regions.

Fractional Reserve Banking is where the real theft occurs. This is the kind of theft that the man on the street can wrap his head around because it doesn’t have an illustrious number of zeroes after it, boggling his mind. When I deposit $1,000 into a bank, they aren’t holding that money and loaning it to other people to make more money for me. Instead, through the miracle of Fractional Reserve Banking, they have just created more money out of thin air! Banking law allows the bank to loan out more money than they hold on deposit. That $1,000 in the vault means they get to issue “Lines of Credit” to everybody to the ratio of 10 to 1. There are several cartoons on YouTube which eloquently explain this better than I could.

Rozeff’s last 3 arguments are perhaps beyond the scope of this article, and quite a bit more in depth as to their requirements.

In short, the impending tides of  turbulence can bring on any number of effects if the citizenry of the nation unites under their respective States to do battle with the Monsters in the Swamp.

Imagine how much worse this could have been if Frau Clinton had been elected…

from Leagle:

No more illegal wiretapping of American citizens….This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. – Barack Obama, Aug. 1, 2007 **************

On second thought, never mind.

With the world’s attention riveted by the earthquake in Haiti, few noticed when, late last month, a federal judge took a pair of sharp scissors to the Bill of Rights. But on Jan. 22, federal district judge Vaughan Walker agreed to dismiss a lawsuit over warrantless wiretapping, as the administration – the current one – had requested.

The suit was the second of its type to get tossed out. The first suit was filed against AT&T, and it accused the company of forking over to federal agents the calls and e-mails of customers in the United States. But Walker dismissed that suit last June, after Congress passed legislation granting retroactive immunity to telecom companies for cooperating with federal surveillance efforts.

The second suit was filed against the National Security Agency. Walker threw it out on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not show they had been individually harmed, because they could not “differentiate themselves from the mass of telephone and Internet users in the United States.” They needed a “direct, personal stake” to claim standing for the right to sue, not merely “a right to have the government follow the law.”

This seems to suggest that as long as the government is hoovering up vast amounts of communications records from many thousands of Americans – “dragnet surveillance,” as the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls it – no harm done: The more people the government wiretaps, the more authority the federal government has to do so.

That is…interesting. Because the Obama administration had asked to have the case dismissed on entirely different grounds – the state- secrets doctrine: Litigating the dispute would require the government to disclose “a range of facts concerning whether, when, how, why, and under what authority the NSA may have utilized certain intelligence sources and methods,” it argued, which could lead to “exceptionally grave harm to national security.”

“Congress has not waived sovereign immunity,” says the administration’s brief, “and summary judgment for the Government on all of plaintiffs’ remaining claims against all parties…is required because information necessary to litigate plaintiffs’ claims is properly subject to and excluded from use in this case by the state secrets privilege.”

This is precisely the position taken by the Bush administration. Indeed, by some lights the Obama position is even worse, since the Bush program was created while the country was in full panic mode after 9/11. Obama not only has had time to reflect from a distance; having reflected, he concluded the Bush position was wrong. Then he turned around and embraced it.

All of which raises two points.

First, candidate Obama’s vilification of the Bush administration’s warrantless-wiretapping program may have been profoundly naive. Perhaps, once in office and provided with highly classified information about the true nature of the terrorist threat, he realized the country continues to face tremendous peril. And that – just as the Bush administration had claimed – the warrantless-wiretapping program had indeed helped thwart plots that would make 9/11 pale by comparison.

This is rank speculation and cannot be proved or disproved, at least here. But it is frightening to contemplate, and seems at least plausible. What else could make such a left-wing former professor of constitutional law go back on his fervent word about civil liberties?

Second – and equally frightening – the Obama administration seems to be arguing that the Fourth Amendment is, in certain circumstances, null and void.

The amendment guarantees that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” There’s no “unless” clause. Now suppose someone thinks the NSA has violated his Fourth Amendment rights by spying on him. The only way to find out is to take the issue to court – where the administration says the case should be summarily dismissed. Yet if individuals can’t even learn whether their rights have been violated, then they certainly can’t seek redress, or generate pressure to change surveillance policies.

Which means, if the Obama administration continues to get its way, the federal government effectively will have carte blanche to spy on American citizens.

The two points lead to one of two conclusions. Either President Obama owes the Bush administration a big apology – or he owes the rest of us a very good explanation.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. – Judge Learned Hand.

Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or bhinkle@timesdispatch.com.

Originally published by A. BARTON HINKLE.

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