Governments around the world proclaim that they govern by the consent of those that are governed. This is no less true in the United States than it is anywhere else. However, such declarations demand questions that are rarely if ever asked. Did you personally consent to your government? Do you know of any person that is currently living, whom actually and personally consented to your government? Because your great, great, great, great grandfather consented to the government, does that mean that he legally bound all future generations by his personal consent? Can a contract outlive the lives of its signatories?
I know that these questions may seem silly, but only because the answers are so obvious. Of course, your ancestors cannot bind you to a contract with the local store or the government or anybody else. Likewise, a contract dies with those that entered into the agreement. The government would have you believe though, that you are born into a contractual obligation with it. Simply because your ancestors consented to it at some point in the past. Not even all of your ancestors. Just some of them. You see, universal suffrage did not exist then. So your female ancestors had no voice. Black citizens were not recognized as such and so they had no voice either. Native Americans were not considered citizens. Americans, that did not own land had no vote and likewise they had no voice with which to consent. So those who consented, were landed, white, educated, gentry. A very small, fraction of a single percent of the population actually had a legally recognized voice with which to consent at all to ratification of the federal government by way of the United States Constitution.
What does the government mean then, when it claims that all citizens have consented to be governed by it? I believe that it only means that Americans have not kicked in the doors of the powers that be and demanded back the power ceded to the federal government by the states almost 240 years ago. In the United States, there have been plenty of opportunities, and there have been plenty of calls throughout the years to do just that. However, calmer voices prevailed, like Thomas Jefferson's voice. He spoke out against his state seceding from the union when the Federalists under President John Adams passed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. These laws made it a federal crime to say anything bad about the president or any member of the government except the vice president (Thomas Jefferson), whom the Federalists did not like. Many people were convicted and imprisoned by way of this law. But when calls arose for the states to secede over this horrific abuse of federal power, Jefferson said no, the time has not yet come to do something so drastic. Little did Jefferson realize that because of his hesitation, he would ensure that the states would never attempt secession until it was too late. In retrospect, it was the perfect time to create the precedent that the states were the sovereign powers of the United States and that the federal government was just an employee of the states. Thomas Jefferson later had the following to say of precedent...
I know that these questions may seem silly, but only because the answers are so obvious. Of course, your ancestors cannot bind you to a contract with the local store or the government or anybody else. Likewise, a contract dies with those that entered into the agreement. The government would have you believe though, that you are born into a contractual obligation with it. Simply because your ancestors consented to it at some point in the past. Not even all of your ancestors. Just some of them. You see, universal suffrage did not exist then. So your female ancestors had no voice. Black citizens were not recognized as such and so they had no voice either. Native Americans were not considered citizens. Americans, that did not own land had no vote and likewise they had no voice with which to consent. So those who consented, were landed, white, educated, gentry. A very small, fraction of a single percent of the population actually had a legally recognized voice with which to consent at all to ratification of the federal government by way of the United States Constitution.
What does the government mean then, when it claims that all citizens have consented to be governed by it? I believe that it only means that Americans have not kicked in the doors of the powers that be and demanded back the power ceded to the federal government by the states almost 240 years ago. In the United States, there have been plenty of opportunities, and there have been plenty of calls throughout the years to do just that. However, calmer voices prevailed, like Thomas Jefferson's voice. He spoke out against his state seceding from the union when the Federalists under President John Adams passed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. These laws made it a federal crime to say anything bad about the president or any member of the government except the vice president (Thomas Jefferson), whom the Federalists did not like. Many people were convicted and imprisoned by way of this law. But when calls arose for the states to secede over this horrific abuse of federal power, Jefferson said no, the time has not yet come to do something so drastic. Little did Jefferson realize that because of his hesitation, he would ensure that the states would never attempt secession until it was too late. In retrospect, it was the perfect time to create the precedent that the states were the sovereign powers of the United States and that the federal government was just an employee of the states. Thomas Jefferson later had the following to say of precedent...
"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering."
The federal government has never cared about the individual rights of the citizens of these United States. Not since our founding did it ever care about anything but providing for itself on the backs and by way of the hardships of good, decent, hard working Americans! We have one example after another to act as proof of that fact. From the Whiskey Excise Act, under President Washington and Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, which caused the Whiskey Rebellion, to Thomas Jefferson acting without Congress to make the Louisiana Purchase, to Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807, to Andrew Jacksons open defiance of the Supreme Court and the rights of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee Creek and Seminole Nations, to Abraham Lincoln's open defiance of the sovereignty of the states and his declaration of war with the southern states over tariffs and excise taxes. The list of presidential overreach and outright abuses of power are long and include practically every president that has ever served.
Unfortunately, just as much damage has been done to the rights of states and citizens by the Supreme Court. A small number of available examples begins with Marbury v. Madison, which established that the federal government is the final judge of its own power; McCullough v. Maryland, established the primacy of the federal government over the states and established the concept of implied federal power; Dred Scott v. Sanford, established the principle that a class of human beings can be defined as non-persons because of an immutable characteristic of their birth; Wickard v. Filburn, which permits the Congress to regulate personal, private, and even trivial behavior; Korematsu v. United States, which permits the attribution of guilt and the infliction of punishment based on an immutable characteristic of birth; Roe v. Wade, which permits murder based on the age of the victim; and National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, which permits the Congress to tax any event or non-event it wishes. In fact, for one particularly damaging period of time (from a citizen's perspective) from 1937 to 1995, the United States Supreme Court did not rule against the federal government one single time. All of this to say that it was a terrible idea to have a body of the federal government sitting in judgment on disagreements between the states and the federal government!
The third component of the federal government has let us down more than the other two combined. I am of course, referring to the United States Congress. I think that I should devote an entire article about the degree to which the House of Representatives and the Legislature have used the Treasury and the law to subvert and undermine the United States Constitution. In effect, the Congress has committed every crime against our nation and our people as it is possible to commit.
So tune in next time for my discussion of the Congress in; Examples of Legal Plunder and Legal Murder by the United States Congress.
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