After establishing in Part 1 of this article series that (1) tyrants accomplish their agenda through centralizing power, (2) the federal government has accomplished and is continuing to accomplish that agenda and (3) the tool of freemen is decentralization and separation from that agenda, I ended the article with this question: “What is the most effective manner to reinstitute and what political form of governments and unions will ensure self-government and decentralized power in America for the current generation and for our posterity?”
There are naturally and essentially two options to restore freedom in any given political structure: (1) work within the current system and (2) work outside of the current system. The United States’ sovereign beginning started with option 2, so the question before us is should we continue to use option 1 or prepare for option 2 (as our founding generation did), appealing the “Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions”?
Option 1: “Work Within the Current System”
For generations, the U.S. government system has been and continues to be saturated with socialist, communist, collectivists, statists, centralist and globalist principles. Since the late 1800s, the agenda of concentrated power has not changed course but has only intensified. Any real and substantive change of power back to individuals, states body-politic and their state governments in its original form is as revolutionary as any other method of revolution and in fact cannot be accomplished as the union exist today.
When a certain form has been so manipulated, corrupted, twisted and mangled, the laws of nature demand that a new form be shaped to accomplish the purposes for which the original form was instituted–that freedom may live, prosper and grow.
A nation-wide freedom revolution within the current system is much less likely to be realized than just about any other form of revolution. The fundamentally conflicting views and beliefs concerning government’s purpose essentially doom the efforts of self-government and self-determination and leads to a pinnacle of conflict. Consequently, much time, energy, money, resources and freedom are lost in the ineffectual process: concentration of power intensifies and continues to take its evolutionary building course.
The 1787 Anti-Federalist-view of a more concentrated union revealed the same sentiment:
“In a republic, the MANNERS, SENTIMENTS, AND INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE SIMILAR. If this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually striving, against those of the other. This will retard the operations of government, and prevent such conclusions as will promote the public good.”[1]
Keep in mind, this assessment was given in opposition to the U.S. Constitution when union was purported and accepted to be a Confederate Constitutional Republic of Sovereign States;[2] the perception of the federal government’s involvement in our lives was virtually nil and unfelt; self-responsibility and –government predominated society; social and individual morals and virtue were expected and practiced in very large part; concentrated, citied populations were rare and agricultural communities were scattered and common; and the power of the States was evidently stronger than of the federal government. The Constitution in practice today could not even pass as a distant relative of the 1787 constitution.
Concerning freedom’s continued destruction, Dr. Edwin Vieira recognizes in his book, Constitutional Homeland Security,
“[There are] FEW DISSENTERS apparently willing or able to do much of anything to thwart or even slow down these developments [of a national police-state], or TO ELIMINATE OR EVEN MITIGATE THE DANGERS THEY POSE.”[3]
Those who are not “willing to dissent” or to “eliminate the danger” clash with those who are. The danger against freedom in the “clashing of opinions” arises when the opinions involve the fundamental understandings of what keeps a people free. As Dr. Vieira rightly observes, a large majority in America do not possess the characteristics to secure freedom, and indeed freedom will not last in such a condition, regardless of what a constitution says.
Philosopher, jurist and military-political leader (one whom America’s founders referred to often), Algernon Sidney, expresses the seriousness of a citizenry using their reasoning and sense to know and discern the principles of government for themselves and their posterity and to plan accordingly:
“Such as have REASON, UNDERSTANDING OR COMMON SENSE, will, and ought to MAKE USE OF IT in those things that CONCERN THEMSELVES AND THEIR POSTERITY, and suspect the words of such as are INTERESTED IN DECEIVING OR PERSUADING THEM not to see with their own eyes, that they may be more easily deceived. This rule obliges us so far to SEARCH INTO MATTERS OF STATE, as to examine the ORIGINAL PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT in general, and of OUR OWN IN PARTICULAR. We cannot DISTINGUISH truth or falsehood, right from wrong, or KNOW what obedience we owe to the magistrate, or what we may JUSTLY EXPECT from him, unless we know what he is, why he is, and by whom he is made to be what he is.”[4]
Concerning the ability to “make use, search, examine, distinguish, know and justly expect,” America demonstrates that most are pervasively ignorant or indifferent. Dangerous in effect, the larger the territory and numbers of people under one government, the more unlikely and even impossible it is for those people to be able to influence or control the government, to govern themselves and to be joined harmoniously with government and each other.
Then, confusion, frustration, anger and futility become predominant in that society. As a result, centralizing power is required to control the masses and to ensure that everyone acts according to the dictates which political powers create for all to follow–supposedly in the name of “justice, equity and freedom,” of course. The result: it is no longer the consent of the governed, but the rule of tyrants. A downward spiral ensues. A thousand different answers are frantically proposed to “restore freedom,” but in a centralized empire, the answers very rarely come by way of the de facto system.
Ultimately, freedom-aware people find themselves in a very serious dilemma–a dilemma perpetuated by the system itself and those politicians who take advantage of the ignorance of the citizens. In truth, freedom-lovers have been in this dilemma for generations in America–the dire situation becoming more and more known and felt. There is no mistaking this conclusion: the U.S. is not even close to being the Confederate Republic the 1700s-generation formed.
Well-meaning Americans talk much about the “intent of the founders” and the “original meaning” of the U.S. constitution, not realizing that “getting back to the constitution” actually means doing what our founders told us to do in the Declaration of Independence: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations…it is their right, it is their DUTY, to THROW OFF SUCH GOVERNMENT, and to PROVIDE NEW GUARDS for their future security.”[5]
Sir Francis Bacon said, “There is no trusting to the force of nature nor to the bravery of words, except it be corroborate by custom.”[6] If the customs and habits of most Americans and the federal government ensure us of anything, it is that nothing they do limits the ever-centralizing and –globalizing efforts of Nimrods.[7]
As Dr. Vieira admits, there are few in the United States willing to dissent to, eliminate or mitigate the threat against freedom. The evidence is pretty clear on that point. Amazingly however, some still suggest that freedom will be restored using the same fruitless methods we have used for more than 100 years. Not so ironically, it is the same method that the federal government insists is the “answer”.
But, what of those people who are willing to apply freedom’s principles? What of those States that desire freedom from the beast and leech of tyranny? For them, a different custom is required to secure freedom, and it will take new leaders to envision it and citizens to practice and establish it.
America’s founders did not fight and die for the cause of “union” or for the preservation of the British constitution. They fought and died for the cause INDEPENDENCE and LIBERTY, in whatever form of union or government would be required to secure it. If we want freedom, we must do the same thing.
I will continue this article in Part 3.
[1] Brutus and Ralph Ketcham, ed., The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, (New York: Signet Classic, 2003), 277 (emphasis added).
[2] This is opposed to a unified, national government of one body-politic.
[3] Edwin Vieira, Constitutional Homeland Security: A Call for Americans to Revitalize “The Militia of the Several States,” vol. 1: The Nation in Arms, (Ashland, OH: BookMasters, Inc., 2007), 36 (emphasis added).
[4] Algernon Sidney, Discourses on Government, vol. 1, (Denmark: Dear and Andrews, 1805), 321 (emphasis added).
[5] Emphasis added.
[6] Francis Bacon and Walter Worrall, ed., The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1597, 1625), 169.
[7] Nimrod is the first recorded dictator, as described in Genesis 10-11. “He that persists in doing injustice, aggravates it, and takes upon himself all the guilt of his predecessors. But if there be a king in the world that claims a right by conquest, and would justify it, he might do well to tell whom he conquered, when, with what assistance, and upon what reason he undertook the war; for he can ground no title upon the obscurity of an unsearchable antiquity; and if he does it not, he ought to be looked upon as an usurping Nimrod.” Sidney, Discourses on Government, 354. “Whereas those that went before him were content to stand upon the same level with their neighbours, and though every man bore rule in his own house yet no man pretended any further, Nimrod’s aspiring mind could not rest here; he was resolved to tower above his neighbours, not only to be eminent among them, but to lord it over them.” Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, vol. 1, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991).
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