Time for Revolution

 

With the election of Donald Trump to his second term, many of us conservative, Constitution loving Americans are tempted to think we have finally won the day. We have but to sit back and let Trump and his administration, and the Republican dominated legislature, fix what ails our nation. Nothing could be further from the truth, because while Trump's election has given us a reprieve, our national decline is so extreme, and been going on so long, that what we really need is a revolution.

The dictionary informs us that a revolution is a rotating or turning around some other object, such as a planet has a revolution around the sun. It can also be used in regard to a machine cycling around, such as a car's engine can run at some revolutions per minute. That same sense of the word applies to political revolutions; it merely means a turning, from one government to another. It can be a turning from the entire system of government and attaining a new one, or it can be simply exchanging one leader for another, a non violent revolution.

Even with that harmless sounding definition, the idea of having a revolution is still very frightening. That fear of revolution is easy to understand because so many times of violence and war, calling themselves revolutions, have totally failed to turn their societies in a better direction. This has happened in so many nations that they are too numerous to list here. They generally call themselves revolutions, but are in reality just one local dictator, or war lord, overthrowing and replacing an older dictator.

Some of the larger, and more well known of these kinds of revolutions were the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution under Mao, and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. What all of those revolutions have in common is that they began in a time of great crisis, and because of that chaotic birth, never developed the kind of social dynamic which marks successful revolutions. They were born in times of great social and material upheaval, and consequently when the people turned away from the existing order they had to make that change while chaos and disorder prevailed. The foundations of a new order, chosen in such conditions, proved to not be stable and enduring.

The American Revolution had a different genesis. While it undoubtedly started with a war for independence from Great Britain, the leaders who launched it were not under immediate physical threat when they did so.

Even in 1776 they could take the time to consider the best way to form together as a nation. Later, after the War of Independence was over, they could take even more time, although they did have to move with deliberate haste, to put a truly workable system of self government together.

Thus was our constitutionally limited democratic republic born, out of a time of orderly revolution. Since the Founders could take time to incorporate many lessons from history in their plan, it has proven much more durable than other revolutions.

So as we think about revolution, it is good to note that revolutions which start for ideological reasons, in times of relative peace, tend to last longer and have better effect, than revolutions that start in rushed chaos, with a need to patch something together quickly. The rule of thumb seems to be that crisis driven revolutions are bad, and ideologically driven revolutions are good.

With that in mind, we should proceed with our revolution, because we are not in a time of immediate crisis. Things aren't coming down around our ears, and if we do conduct a successful revolution, there won't be a crisis. We simply have to ensure it is the good kind of revolution, the ideological kind.

Now we can come up with a new definition for revolution, or at least a new technique with which to conduct a good revolution. Basically, it should consist of taking a long, honest look at history; Figure out what we did wrong, and quit doing it: Figure out what we did right, and do more of it, and then carry on. By carrying on is meant that these deliberations have to go from just the merely ideological to actually being implemented in the real world.

The most important thing about having a discussion to separate the good from the bad in our history is that it has to be both honest and thorough. Take, for instance, how we must address that most difficult of subjects: “racism.” If we allow a superficial opinion to dominate, we will never come to a good result. The quick, easy and wrong opinion would be to say that racism is something really bad that White people do. The solution, if we adopt that view, is to squelch and discriminate against White people.

That will never work, because it is not the truth. The truth is that racism permeates all of humanity, and has been manifested in every group in this nation. While it is true that it manifested as a worse problem among White people, it wasn't exclusively their problem, so curing that disease can't focus solely on that one group. Rather, the problem of racism should be dealt with like a contagious disease, and attacked with equal honest fervor wherever it manifests.

That then is an example of the kind of thinking our new American revolution must employee if it is to be successful. It has to be, and can be, a thorough and honest long term conversation about what kind of nation we want to be.

Some might scoff and say that if we don't have a time of a real shoot em up, violent war, it isn't a revolution. Think about it though. If we can arrive at that time of an open hearted, honest dialogue, would that not accomplish a true turning in another direction of our society, even if we got there without a lot of people dying.

On the other hand, if we did have some kind of major bloody struggle, and never actually got to that time of honest dialogue, would it really turn us in another direction? Would it not probably just install some even more corrupt regime on us, and we continue on the same down ward path. Needless to say, we would have to continue with even more death, maiming, resentment, and hate.

In a lot of ways, we should realize that this is just calling us back to being true Americans. Our revolution merely commenced with the Declaration of Independence, with its call for liberty and justice for all, and for governments to have the consent of the governed. Those were undoubtedly revolutionary sentiments, but our revolution actually got fired up later, in 1787. At that time our Founding Fathers got together to formulate our constitutional government. Admittedly, some of them were rich enough to be considered potential oligarchs, as some accuse them of, but they were oligarchs with a difference. The difference was that this particular group of oligarchs knew that their necks were on the line. If they didn't formulate a government that was strong and stable enough to endure, the British were very likely to return and gather back up their empire, one state at a time. The Founders would then have undoubtedly been hung for their troubles. What's more, this particular set of oligarchs also knew that any government they devised would have to gain the acceptance of the people. The American people at the time were the most astute and politically engaged people on Earth. So the Founders knew they had to do a good job.

Therefore, they started our Republic on a revolutionary basis, looking at the long sweep of world history, as they could see it, and incorporating what had worked well in the past, and rejecting what had not worked well. Truly revolutionary thinking.

Then, the American Revolution really got started, once the people as a whole began to wrestle with the concepts of self government. Not only did we decide to end the scourge of slavery withing our first ninety years, but we ended property requirements for voting, established schools and universities, and accomplished many other revolutionary goals. In fact, while we have lost much of that early revolutionary zeal, it is still with us, and needs merely to be infused with new life.

The next American revolution, the one we must initiate now, also promises to be a years, if not decades, long process. Let it be. It is long past time that the people, the citizens of this nation, reclaimed their revolutionary zeal, and started to engage in the revolutionary debates that this nation, indeed this whole planet, so desperately needs.

Say No to Jingoistic Herdability

 

There is a human malady, newly come to light. This one is worse than Nazism, Communism, racism, religious bigotry, wokeism, lynch mobs, or any other examples of group hysteria. This malady is a deeper problem than those because it is the one that enables all those other problems. The malady in question is our human propensity to be herd-able, our willingness, indeed eagerness, to allow ourselves to be herded around. I recently came to realize the importance of this problem during a discussion with a friend at a local coffee spot. During the same encounter it became clear how much of a role jingos play in enabling this human herding.

Before relating the incident at the coffee spot, let's take a closer look at jingos, and the jingoism that has long affected our thinking. There is nothing new or old fashioned about jingos, but the name has been changed over the years to protect the crafty. These days of the internet we call them memes, or the slightly older terms, T-shirt sayings, or bumper stickers, or sound bite logic. Political slogans of all stripes fit this description. Jingos. They are pithy little phrases which are used as a kind of shorthand, to sum up a position, to let other people know where we stand. They can be used for or against any particular cause.

In olden times jingos like “manifest destiny” or “that's progress” were a couple of favorites. “Fifty four forty or fight” was used to insist on American territorial expansion, while “free soil”, “peculiar institution” and “states rights” were used around the time of the American Civil War. Many dog whistle code words are also jingos. Of course, a thorough look at jingos would include some racist phrases, such as Sheridan's “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” or phrases more common folks used like, “I don't mind colored folks, it's N-words I can't stand.” All were jingos in older times, and all used, in their times, to keep folks in easily controlled herds. Consider how effectively folks could be kept in line by hinting that they were “N-word lovers.” That jingo usually ended any discussion and ended many germinal friendships between Black and White.

Which brings us to the discussion I had at coffee the other day. I mentioned a recent New York Times article which asserted that President Trump's ban on birthright citizenship might have a leg to stand on in court. This had surprised me, since it came from the normally left leaning (anti Trump) New York Times. I mentioned it because I favor such a ban, although I can see the case against it has merit. My conversation partner said that the proposed ban was wrong because, “it is in the Constitution.” I responded to her that it wasn't so cut and dried as all that and started going in to the particulars of the article.

She responded, not with anything substantive about the Constitution or birthright citizenship, but with a string of anti American jingos.

“Well, we didn't let Natives be citizens. We held Japanese Americans in internment camps,” and such like remarks. Courageously fighting long ago battles. All delivered with an attitude of you have to accept what I am saying or I am on the verge of losing all hope in the country, and it will be your fault if I do.

Instead of being a dialogue, I realized these jingos were being used to herd me, to silence my thinking and make me stay in line. It was the end of the discussion, as she “had” to leave, but I felt, as I often do in such cases, defrauded. I wanted to ask her if she was saying, as she was implying, that the United States of America does not have a legitimate right to exist. I see that implied in her remarks, and the jingos she used to deflect the conversation. The idea seems to be (and I hear it implied a lot) that we really shouldn't control immigration because we really shouldn't even be a nation.

There are a slew of similar negative-toward-America jingos around these days, and they are often used to keep the herd together. Jingos like “White supremacy,” or “Misogyny” or “capitalism is evil, or “stolen land.” On the other hand, there are more positive sounding jingos in use today, such as “inclusive,” or “tolerant,” which are also used to end discussions and either reject the other person, or keep those on one side in line.

On the conservative side, the jingos start with the word MAGA, Make America Great Again, with the addendum being the assertion this is “the greatest country ever” and that those who complain should just “buck up, and get jobs.” Once again, these, and similar jingos serve to cut short any real discussion, to keep the herd (or at least one side of it) in line, and to reject those on the other side.

This is all very disturbing to me personally, because I have seen, and been the victim of, the herd mentality gone bad. My first experience with it was in the second grade, playing four square, a playground game played at recess. The first time it happened, I must admit I was in the wrong, kind of.

We were playing the game, taking turns. I saw that some of the kids were cheating (popular kids it turned out) and getting away with it. I got into the game and hit it slightly out of bounds. Since I had seen others arguing their way back into the game, I tried it, firmly standing my cheating ground. Before I knew what had happened, I was surrounded by the rest of the kids pointing at me and chanting, “the majority rules you're out.” Their jingo. So I retreated to the back of the line.

However, on subsequent days, when I would enter the daily game, every time there was a close call, (I was never again in the wrong) the same group, led by the same chubby girl, would surround me and herd me out of the game with the same chant. I realize, in retrospect, that they must have felt so good in doing that. It must have felt so powerful acting as a mob, with that same chubby girl leading the way each time, that those moments became more important than the game itself. I got to where I found something else to do at recess.

I ran into the same mob mentality in the sixth grade, at a different school. In the middle of the first semester, a new kid came into the class, which was a magnet class for gifted students. His name was Doug, and I got along fine with him. One day, one of the popular kids (it is always them, isn't it?), who must have been in a conflict with Doug, was asked if he would fight him. He answered, “No, I ain't going to fight no N-word.”

This shocked me, because even though Doug was slightly dark skinned, I didn't realize until that moment he was African American. Without thinking about it, I let the popular kid know that he shouldn't have that attitude. Doug withdrew from the class just a day or two later, undoubtedly due to racist harassment. I ended up being the enemy of the cool kids for the rest of the year, who would chase me around the school yard, and ostracized me from their company. They also influenced (herded) the rest of my classmates to do the same. I then had almost no one to talk to, except for a couple of nice girls.

This essay is not, however, about me. Don't cry for me Argentina, especially over long resolved childhood trauma. Rather it is about the propensity of us humans to use half thought out ideas, communicated via catchy jingos, to allow ourselves to be herded so easily. Especially because that herd instinct can so easily morph into a mob mentality.

That is what went so wrong with the Nazis, and with Mao's Red Guards. We saw it in operation during the BLM Summer of Love, where mobs felt emboldened to harass and humiliate strangers on the basis of their race, all in the name of ending racism. The wilding and larceny gangs have to be included in this herding gone wrong problem as well. Black Lives Matter is, in fact, another jingo used in the way they all are, to herd humans, reject the other, and possibly justify violence. The same could be said, with less accuracy, about the January 6 rioters with their chants of “stop the steal.” In those, and many other instances, (lynch mobs, etc) normal people can feel a great empowerment in a mob. Especially with agreed upon jingos dancing in their heads.

I think about my friend in the recent coffee conversation. She was on fire to win the battle of the Cherokee “trail of tears,” now that it is safely in the past. But at the time, when Davey Crockett spoke out against the illegal actions of President Andrew Jackson, I wonder if she would have spoken up. The folks back in Tennessee, his constituents, voted him out of congress for his straying from the herd in that way. His last words to them were, “Y'all can go to hell, I'm going to Texas.”

Similarly, when Abraham Lincoln spoke out (with his “Spot” speech) against the Mexican American War, a war which many today see as unjust, he got voted out of congress in 1836. Not many normal people, obedient members of their herd, approved of his truth telling.

Keeping us in tightly controlled herds is not, however, the work of the elites who would rule us. Even though they probably facilitate the herding by using their media power to open the window about what is acceptable to use in our jingos. It is called the “Overton Window”, and it is a highly controlled opening in what is acceptable public dialogue. But the herding is done by us, in our little gatherings, ostracizing, ignoring, huffing the oddball off.. Making it to where only certain opinions can be viced if one is to be admitted into polite company.

This phenomenon goes across all peoples, groups, nations and times. Almost all nations can be defined by whatever consensual delusion (jingos) they agree on, and herd themselves with. Their Overton windows, and their local jingos. God save the Queen, Deutchland uber alles, Viva la France, Viva Mexico, God bless America. Our king, our land, our culture. This thinking reigns over the entire planet.

It is not that this social cohesion is all bad, but that it is easily misused to keep us in tidy, obedient herds. What we must always keep in mind is that it is all always on the verge of mob rule and riot.

The antidote is not to just hate Nazis, or racists, or Wokeism. Rather the antidote is to look to our own souls, and minds. The antidote is to make ourselves, as individuals, not herd-able. To no longer accept the soft oppression of silencing, of ostracism, of ourselves or others; to not allow the popular kids, or influential adults, to set the agenda, and subtly ensure no other point of view is voiced in our groups.

In other words, the way to avoid this malady is to become truly human. To work toward building a truly humane, reason based society,. We must nurture up, educate for and develop the strength to stand alone as individuals. To stand for the truth as we see it, and not allow any thing other than a stronger, deeper truth, arrived at through open debate and discussion, to change out stance. Certainly don't allow the social ostracism of some fools who refuse to even look at the truth, who hide behind half thinking jingoism, to in any way dissuade you from seeking it. Not in school, not at the coffee group, not at church, or work, or at a political rally. Be willing to stand alone for the truth, as you see it, regardless of the latest jingo. If you don't do that, then realize that you will probably, eventually, find yourself swept up in some new form of Nazi like mob rule.

William Seward in Black History

 

When the name William Seward is mentioned, most people remember him as the guy who bought Alaska from the Russians. If they know a little more history they also know that he was Secretary of State in the Lincoln administration. While those two achievements give him historical significance, they come far short of a full accounting of the man. With a more full understanding of his life, William Seward emerges as one of the greatest leaders this nation has ever known. What's more, it is entirely appropriate to recall his life during Black History Month, because as a national leader, he arguably accomplished more than any other leader to uplift Black people.

To start to get a feel for the man, let us hearken back to March of 1846. A free Black man, one William Freeman, recently released from five years in prison after it was learned he was wrongly convicted, went on an insane rampage, murdering an entire family in Seward's hometown of Auburn, New York. There was no doubt as to the man's guilt in this case, and the prisoner barely made it past the lynch mob to jail.

In court, no lawyer was willing to take the case, probably since the citizens of Auburn let it be known they would kill any who dared. In the courtroom, when the judge asked if any would defend him, William Seward, a practicing attorney (by then a former governor of the state, not yet elected to the senate), stepped forward to volunteer his services. At great personal and career risk and against the advice of political allies, William Seward chose to defend the obviously guilty Mr. Freeman on the basis of his insanity.

He lost the case, but in making it he gave a rousing defense of the humanity of Black people, and argued that if the defendant was White, the jury would would have found him insane and committed him to life in a mental institution. In many ways, therefore, William Seward actually lived out, in 1846, the heroic roles portrayed in the movies “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “A Time to Kill.” Such courage and compassion should never be forgotten.

Even earlier in his life, his wife and he, while not in favor of slavery, decided, in his typically open minded and congenial way, to go down South and see things for themselves. Barely into Virginia in their southbound carriage, they encountered a group of slave boys being driven to market, chained and naked. The sight so repulsed both Mr. and Mrs. Seward that they immediately turned around and never again visited the South. They were passionate abolitionists from that day forward.

When elected to the Senate, Senator Seward was the leading voice for abolition and lifting the Black, or what was called at the time, the Negro population. This earned him the undying hatred of slave owners. Once, in the heat of battle leading to the Civil War, some Southern Senator, letting the false mask of civility slip, used the N-word in a speech in the Senate. Senator Seward, in his response, let it be known that no one would ever be president who spells “Negro with two g's.” Statements like that, and he made many in favor of freedom for Negros, did not win him any friends in the South.

By 1860, with the North turning away from slavery, and the Republican Party uniting around the issue of abolition, it was assumed that the greatest advocate of emancipation, William Seward, would be the nominee. No one, however, had reckoned on the political acumen of the obscure country lawyer from Illinois, so Abraham Lincoln won the nomination for President.

Although undoubtedly disappointed, William Seward bore the loss well, and in his typical noble manner, campaigned vigorously for Lincoln, and for the cause of emancipation. After the Republicans won, Senator Seward was anticipating completing his term in the Senate and retiring to his home in Auburn. It was not to be though, because Abraham Lincoln was not only a canny politician, he was a truly wise leader.

Seward was expecting a pro forma invitation from Lincoln to join the administration, and it was expected he would, in similar pro forma fashion, turn down the offer. But Lincoln sent a second letter with the pro forma one, and its sincerity and wisdom convinced Seward to accept the appointment as Secretary of State. It was probably the best decision either man ever made, as it brought together two of the greatest minds in the country, at the very moment the nation was in its greatest need of wisdom..

Even before Lincoln's inauguration, then still Senator Seward proved his mettle by helping to thwart a Confederate plot to take over Washington just before the inauguration and thereby win the war without a shot being fired. Edwin Stanton, also later in Lincoln's cabinet, was in Buchanan's cabinet, privy to the treasonous conversations going on in the Oval office, and secretly relaying that information to Senator Seward. Seward's actions helped preserve the Union before the war even started. Once again, he acted, at great personal risk, with courage and diplomacy.

From day one of his administration, Lincoln and Seward had a close and trusting working relationship, going so far as Lincoln allowing Seward to modify the language his inaugural address. Their on going collaboration was vital in fulfilling the goal of keeping the border states in the Union.

What's more, Seward had previously traveled extensively in Europe, with his strong abolitionist stance opening many doors on the continent. He now effectively used those contacts to help prevent England and France from recognizing the Confederacy. The Europeans staying neutral in the war deprived the Confederacy of a vital source of revenue, and was one of the main reasons the Union won the war.

The night Lincoln was assassinated, another member of the team of assassins tried to kill William Seward and his son. He used a knife and stabbed the Secretary repeatedly in the face. The only reason it did not kill him was that he had recently suffered a broken jaw in a carriage accident, and had a metal brace on his jaw which deflected the knife from hitting his jugular vein. His son was even more grievously wounded but both men survived the assault.

Sadly, their families did not survive the ordeal. His beloved wife Frances, a fine woman who supported her husband in every issue, died six weeks later. Undoubtedly, her demise was a result of the strain of caring for his wounds, and the stress of the times. His daughter Fannie also died shortly thereafter.

Seward recovered and stayed on as Secretary of State under Andrew Johnson, which is how he was in a positions to arrange and conclude our purchase of Alaska. He died in 1872 at 71 years of age.

Much of the information in this essay was gleaned from reading “Team of Rivals,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin (the book can't be recommended highly enough). On the cover of that book is a posed photo of Lincoln and his cabinet, with Lincoln and Seward seated and facing toward each other. After reading the book, one is struck by the idea that arguably the greater man in that photo is William Seward. Admittedly, both men had failings, but both men were undoubtedly great leaders of a righteous cause.

The question becomes, “Why isn't he already highly remembered?” The answer is that history has a way of being written by the winners, and the survivors. In the chaos of war and reconstruction, and the national grief at President Lincoln's death, a lot of Seward's deeds have been forgotten. What's more, virtually none of his family survived the tumultuous times to keep his memory alive.

So it is time that we remember him, today. Additionally, even though he and this author are both White, it is totally fitting for his life to be remembered during Black History Month, because William Seward deserves as much or more credit for preserving the Union and ending slavery as anyone, including Abraham Lincoln. He had a huge effect on Black history. He was not only one of the greatest Americans ever born, he was one of the greatest humans. Such inspiring figures should never be lost to history.

On a related note, let me add. A lot of White folks don't much like Black History Month, with their yearly refrain being “Why don't we have White history month?”

I rather enjoy learning of Black leaders and exceptional figures from the past. I had never heard of folks like Roberts Smalls, or Harriet Tubman before Black History Month began, and I am better for learning of their heroic lives and courageous contributions. Rather than ending this yearly history lesson, maybe it can be transformed to include more truly great people, like William Seward, from all quarters of our national history. I know Native American leaders like Crazy Horse should also be remembered, as should Ceasar Chavez, and other exemplary leaders of various ethnic groups, Whites included.

Maybe instead of Black History month, or focusing any other particular group, let us transition to a never ending history minute every day that reminds us of great figures from our collective past. This will be a way of reminding us of who we are, where we came from and how we got here. Further, such remembrance might even inspire us to consider what kind of future we want to build together.

How, and Why, to Save America

 

How, and Why, to Save America

America, our once glorious Republic, seems to be circling the drain, on its' declining way to join history's other failed republics. The stakes in this moment are astronomical; either continue on this decline and end up in some form of enslaved dictatorship. Or reverse course, and we can gather the tools to actually build our own golden age.

There is a way out of this trap, but the first step is for us to think our way out of it. If we must also fight our way out of it, either culturally, politically, or militarily, none of those efforts will succeed if we have not first thought out way out of it. Moreover, if we do think our way out of this trap, we might not have to do any other real fighting. This plan offers that way to think our way out of American decline and stand a real chance at a golden future.

Before we can understand and implement the plan to save America, we must first examine the process which has brought us to this desperate moment in history, a moment where America obviously needs saving. The short narrative is that the powers of economic, social and moral self government were usurped from the state and local governments by a corrupt federal government.  Simply reversing those unconstitutional usurpations will tend to revive a spirit of sincere patriotism in the hearts and minds of the citizenry. Actually living in a healthy republic is bound to nurture up those long sought republican virtues.

Since the decline and near fall of the American Republic is a large, multifaceted story, it will be best to start at the beginning and look at it one step at a time. Once we have looked at what was done to us, it will be much easier to comprehend what a precious treasure we are losing, and how (and why) we can revive our dying treasure of Liberty. In overly broad strokes, (in depth analysis on each of the major subjects will be linked as appropriate) the narrative of America's decline goes like this.

The first dysfunction in our republic was when we did not wholeheartedly embrace the “all” part of liberty and justice for all. No link is needed to prove this. While this has been a debilitating and shameful problem, it did not prevent many positive aspects of Liberty from manifesting in our public life. In fact, the ongoing efforts of many people to overcome this flaw have been some of the most inspiring chapters in our national story. When we get to the section of this essay dealing with remedies, the first stipulation will be that we must sincerely commit to that “all” part this time around, or nothing else can possibly work.

The second major dysfunction (there were only two) was caused by the advent of the telegraph in 1844. This electronic communication medium became the means by which the wealthy gained effective control of the free press, a problem the founders of our nation had not anticipated. They reasoned that if the national government could not make any law prohibiting a free press then the press would, as a whole, remain free. Because of the resulting competitive marketplace of ideas, the truth would always find its way to the minds of the people.

With the coming of the telegraph, some few wealthy newspaper owners could lay telegraph lines from city to city, for instance between Washington and New York. This gave them such a competitive advantage (vital news of legislative actions days before any other newspaper) that their circulation swelled. Then they could sell more advertising, which allowed them to charge less for the daily paper. More current news, and more of it, for a penny a copy versus older news, and less of it, for ten cents a copy. The reading public made the obvious choice and the Penney Newspapers soon dominated the market.

Most of the papers that survived that market shakeout were either owned by rich people (therefore advocating for their interests) or were dependent on wire services the newspapers subscribed to, which sent to them telegraphed news reports. This resulted in very few points of view in newspapers coast to coast. Additionally, almost all the newspapers had to sell advertising to compete, so they became dependent on advertising which meant they all tended to defend the interests of the wealthy.

Consequently the press, while free of governmental controls, had ceased, by approximately 1880, being a loyal watchdog for the people's interests. Curiously, the press never bothered informing the people of this fact. This hidden dysfunction then enabled all the usurpations and abuses which followed, because the free press no longer worked to identify threats to the people's Liberty, nor to explain to the people why such threats were important.

A long train of abuses and usurpations followed, each one symbiotically contributing to a cultural decline which paved the way for the next abuse or usurpation. There were three major usurpations, with a number of minor ones, which totally changed our form of government over the course of eight decades without the people even realizing it. The first of these major usurpations was the proclamation of corporate personhood, by the Supreme Court, in 1886. (Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 US 394)

The concept of corporate personhood paved the way for the monopoly and trust era of American business, also known as the Robber Barron or Gilded Age. That was because when corporations gained the status of persons, that status was used as a pretext to give them the protections guaranteed to persons under the 14^th Amendment. Thus, almost all state level regulation of corporations became unconstitutional. In that way, the powers of economic self government were usurped from our communities. Read about this change here.  Sorry, these blog links are not live (I can't figure out how to make them live), so copy and paste to your browser, or just highlight and hit go to link, or whatever works for you.  But these links do fill in vital information.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/corporate-personhood.html

With suddenly unbridled corporations (and heretofore unheard of interstate corporations !) running roughshod over the people, and state governments no longer having the powers to protect their citizens from corporate abuse, the people began to feel local and state governments to be incompetent, and therefore feel a need for the federal government to protect them. This is the first instance of one usurpation perverting the culture and paving the way for another series of abuses and usurpations.

The popular demand for federal intervention resulted in the Progressive Era, which gave us all sorts of minor abuses and usurpations, such as the Food and Drug Act of 1905, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, direct election of senators, and prohibition of alcohol. The only undeniably good change to come out of that era was women's suffrage.

The worst aspect of the Progressive era was the adoption of a generally elitist attitude on the part of the federal government and its bureaucracies. With the bias toward the powerful in the press, and the advent of corporate dominance, it was reasoned (by leaders like Walter Lippmann and Woodrow Wilson) that the common person was no longer capable of understanding the complexities of modern government.

In fact, they were essentially correct, but not for the reasons they thought. With the transfer of powers from the local to the federal governments, the issues, and how they were framed and decided, evolved into something the ordinary person, in the small town or local neighborhood, could not understand. Affairs of state are beyond their ken when those affairs are conducted at such a distance and on such a scale. Montesquieu, Jefferson, De Toqueville and Chesterton all warned about this problem.

It is not that the people had suddenly become brainless scarecrows, but that it is only when real issues of government are decided locally that the common person can feel competence and mastery in dealing with them. By removing the powers of government from local hands, in response to the ravages caused by corporations being seen as persons, the most basic dynamic of democracy was scuttled, the former active citizens becoming mere subjects. The resulting apathy frustrated would be reformers, like the young Walter Lippmann, which eventually caused him to despair of democracy altogether.

Therefore, the anointed ones reasoned, the decisions of government should be handed over to trained experts who would administer government and better defend the interests of the masses than the people could themselves. This view was enthusiastically embraced by leaders and the now empowered federal bureaucrats. It was equally embraced by most journalists, who now saw their mission changed, from one of informing a self governing citizenry, to one of manufacturing consent (for the people's own good) among an increasingly ignorant, supine and sheep like populace. Again, usurpations changed the culture into one more accepting of even more usurpations

With all the progressive changes in force, and corporate personhood still unnoticed and unchallenged, the whole structure came crashing down in the Great Depression of 1929-1941. Predictably, since the press was increasingly the monopolized tool of the wealthy, ending corporate personhood was never even considered as a solution to economic woes. Rather, in a series of unconstitutional and illegal moves, FDR used the economic crisis to run a fascist coup from 1933 to 1937. This second major usurpation of powers from the states and localities to the federal government took almost all the powers, and responsibilities, of social self government from the people.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/fdr-was-fascistic-traitor.html

Among those changes, Social Security, which FDR first established in a popular political move to win the 1936 election, had a much more detrimental effect on our culture than is generally recognized. Here is a link that will explain how.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/social-security.html

With all these usurpations and abuses hidden from our minds by a treasonous free press, and those engines of cultural destruction operating at full throttle, the changes were consolidated in our minds as we endured the remainder of the Great Depression and came through World War 2. At the end of that war we emerged as a nation completely different than the one the people thought they had. Since we still had elections and the other trappings of democracy, no one noticed. What's more, since we had just triumphed in the biggest war ever waged, we assumed our system was functioning well, especially since the still trusted (but secretly corrupted) media was not telling us any different. Usurpations had mutilated the culture, laying the groundwork for even more usurpations and abuses.

Shortly after the end of World War 2, the last of the major usurpations was affected, which was the taking of the powers of moral self government from we, the people, in our communities. This was done by a Supreme Court ruling, (Everson v Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1) in 1947 wherein the Court opined at length that the 1^st Amendment was suddenly seen as contained within the 14^th Amendment, because of its' requirement that all privileges and immunities must apply to all citizens. Suddenly the idea of a separation of church and state was to be applied to the states, as was a prohibition on any kind of restriction on speech or press.

The people weren't informed about these changes until thirteen years later (that pesky corporate controlled press again) when it was suddenly sprung on us to throw prayer out of schools in the early 1960's. While this monumental change was generally accepted, with only small whimpers of objection, it amounted to yet another usurpation of power from the states and localities to the federal government. This time they took from us the powers of moral self government. This usurpation amounted to a uniquely perfect crime, because the victims of this crime consider themselves to be its beneficiaries. Read in detail how this change was affected, and why it is so destructive to American free self government.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/how-first-amendment-was-stolen.html

Let's review what has been done to us politically, and how it has warped us culturally. In a process that stretched from 1886 to 1963, with a treasonous free press keeping it all quiet, the powers of economic, social, and moral self government were taken from we, the people, in our communities. This has greatly changed the dynamics of political power in our nation, transforming it from a locally self governing republic into something more akin to a continental size fascist oligarchy. Far worse, in making these changes, in removing actual self government from us as citizens of communities, it has almost completely killed the most important dynamic of Liberty, the one thing that made our republic work well when it did work well.  That forgotten blessing of Liberty is the fervent, morality inducing, consciousness of self government living in the hearts of a free people.

The dire philosophical consequence of these changes becomes clear when we resort to the thoughts of the esteemed Thomas Jefferson, recorded in a couple of private letters to friends.

“Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste. And I do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common law being in force in the United States…, it would become the most corrupt government on the earth…” This is from a letter to Gideon Granger, 1800.^4.

In the same vein in another letter to William T. Barry, 1822, Jefferson wrote:

“If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.”^5.

Perhaps in echo to Jefferson, another great student of democratic republican government laid out his thoughts. In Democracy in America, Alexis DeTocqueville wrote:

“However, the strength of free peoples resides in the local community. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach, they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty. Passing passions, momentary interest, or chance circumstances may give it the external shape of independence, but the despotic tendencies which have been driven into the interior of the body social will sooner or later break out on the surface.”^6.

DeToqueville is obliquely referring to what can be thought of as the greatest blessing of liberty, which is the kind of morality inducing synergy that a system of Local Community Moral Self Government tends to generate.  As the founders noted, and warned, it requires a moral citizenry to maintain our system free self government.  The other side of that coin, the corollary, is also vitally true. Only a truly free and self governing people living in that system of LCMSG tends to realize and resonate with the reasons to be moral.

 That almost completely lost and forgotten dynamic is that when people are truly free and self governing (and that can happen only in local community) the very fact of their self governance sets in motion a positive synergy which tends to produce a moral, aroused citizenry. There will be more on this subject in the post about LCMSG. At this point it will just be noted that as we, as a nation, have lost that vital moralizing synergy, the problems of immorality have come to loom ever larger.

The cultural decline that has resulted from this long train of usurpations and abuses has brought us to this point where America is poised on a cliff of doom and ruin. We are caught in a negative, downward spiraling synergy of a declining morality leading to more authoritarian government which leads to even more moral decline which leads to even more authoritarian government. The way out of this downward spiral is to re-found out republic on the same sound basis of Local Community Moral Self Government that we used the first time.

Consider the following prediction from Alexis DeTocqueville published in 1835.

DeTocqueville's Warning

“Thus, I think that the type of oppression threatening democracy will not be like anything there has been in the world before; our contemporaries would not be able to find any example of it in their memories. I, too, am having difficulty finding a word which will exactly convey the whole idea I have formed; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. This is a new phenomenon which I must, therefore, attempt to define since I can find no name for it.

I wish to imagine under what new features despotism might appear in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, living apart, is almost unaware of the destiny of all the rest. His children and personal friends are for him the whole of the human race; as for the remainder of his fellow citizens, he stands alongside them but does not see them;, he touches them without feeling them; he exists only in himself and for himself; if he still retains his family circle, at any rate he may be said to have lost his country.

Above these men stands an immense and protective power which alone is responsible for looking after their enjoyments and watching over their destiny. It is absolute, meticulous, ordered, provident, and kindly disposed. It would be like a fatherly authority, if, father like, its aim were to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks only to keep them in perpetual childhood; it prefers its citizens to enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind. It works readily for their happiness but it wishes to be the only provider and judge of it. It provides their security, anticipates and guarantees their needs, supplies their pleasures, directs their principal concerns, manages their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances. Why can it not remove from them entirely the bother of thinking and the troubles of life?

Thus, it reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range and gradually removes autonomy itself from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all this, inclining them to tolerate all these things and often even to see them as a blessing.

Thus, the ruling power, having taken each citizen one by one into its powerful grasp and having molded him to its own liking, spreads it arms over the whole of society, covering the surface of social life with a network of petty, complicated, detailed, and uniform rules through which even the most original minds and the most energetic spirits cannot reach the light in order to rise above the crowd. It does not break men’s wills but it does soften, bend, and control them; rarely does it force men to act but it constantly opposes what actions they perform; it does not destroy the start of anything but it stands in its way; it does not tyrannize but it inhibits, represses, drains, snuffs out, dulls so much effort that finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as shepherd.”^5.

The society DeTocqueville describes seems to be the one in which we find ourselves. The assertion here is that this woeful state of affairs is the direct and inevitable outgrowth of the three major usurpations of the powers of economic, social, and moral self-determination (especially the moral) from our communities, These usurpations have resulted in an atomized, unworkable definition of liberty being imposed on us. This atomized, alienated, powerless mindset of the modern American must be contrasted with the involved, connected, and sincere citizen that used to be the norm in America, and would (it is here asserted) tend to be produced if these powers of self-government were restored to the states and localities.

Before going into the remedies to our problems, which is a feasible plan to restore our republic to its original architecture, it must be emphasized that such a re-founding must start by thoroughly rejecting our first major dysfunction, which is racism. Additionally, there is a way to use the electronic media to overcome the second dysfunction , which was the corruption of the press by big business interests. We can't, however, get ahead of our narrative, so let us first consider what kind of society we can expect to live in if we restore to ourselves proper constitutional order.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/lcmsg.html

With that picture of LCMSG firmly planted in our minds, we begin to form an answer to the question of, “Why save America?” The answer is because Liberty, on the American plan is what will transform us into the kind of people, and citizenry, who can rise above all challenges, and actually find our way to a better world. However, before we jump into the final section of this treatise, that of how to make the changes required to re-found our Republic, one more detour to another linked essay is called for, this one to further motivate us about the “why” of LCMSG. We will now examine the usually ignored and unnoticed perils of elitism. This because it is elitism which is the beating dark heart of all the other forms of government, from Marxism to socialism to monarchy to aristocracy to oligarchy to plain old fashioned dictatorship. Some form of elitism is what we will be stuck with if we don't get back to Liberty. We should comprehend how inherently evil that dynamic is.

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/elitism.html

Leaving elitism behind, hopefully, please God, forever, we can now get to the best part; how we might actually put our glorious Republic back together. The first step is to commit to doing this together, as the American people. Whether your predecessors were living on this land before Europeans got here, or they came from China yesterday. If they were from Vietnam, Congo, Brazil, India, Poland, Polynesia, Nigeria, Spain, Ireland or Mongolia. If your people came over on the Mayflower or were brought in a slave ship, or even if they got here by swimming the Rio Grande. If they, and you, came seeking the blessings of freedom, then it is time we all came together, as equal Americans, and agree to put our Republic back on the sound basis of Local Community Moral Self Government.

In all that follows, where ever you came from in search of Liberty, allow the words, thoughts and principles put forth by the American Founders become your thoughts, let them take deep root in your heart. As Benjamin Franklin warned, if we don't hang together, we will most certainly hang separately.

Re-founding the American Republic

The first step in re-founding our nation is restoring the First Amendment. Legally, this will be easy to accomplish if we, the people, want to. If we are convinced that America has always been a good idea, and that this re-founding is a good idea, fixing the misuse of the First Amendment will be relatively easy. Congress can fix the Court's blunder by using a long dormant check contained in the Constitution. In Article III, Section 2, the second sentence of the second paragraph of the Constitution says;

“In all other cases before mentioned the supreme court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the congress shall make.”

What this clearly means is that Congress can make exceptions to the appellate jurisdiction of the Court. Once again, it will take the people united coming to the determination that change should be made and then demanding representatives and senators act on that determination (or electing new ones). The change could then take place overnight, and the states would naturally come in to fill the vacuum, picking up the scepter of moral self-government. In that way, the issues of church and state, freedom of speech and press, and freedom of assembly would rise no further than the supreme courts of the various states. Unless the federal Congress passed such a law, then a suit against that law could be an original action brought before the Supreme Court. Or the Supreme Court could simply reverse the wrong headed blunder they made in Everson v Board of Education and save us the trouble.

Once we actually start to re-found this nation, starting with these moral issues makes sense for two reasons. First, this initial change will be fairly easy to accomplish once the political will exists. Second, once we make these changes some of the social and political aspects of a free society will start to take organic root. As these powers devolve to the states, we will rediscover that our states provide a more accessible and conciliatory arena for our political disputes. We will be able to make laws on these subjects without making questionable presumptions on our constitutions since the states have far more latitude, fewer limits, in the making of laws than does the federal government. We are likely to find more nuanced compromises on some of the burning issues and not so easily enter into the current mode of completely disregarding the concerns of those on the other side as we work to jam our values down their throats.

What's more, on a social level, returning these moral issues to the states will reinvigorate a couple of social institutions of a free society. First will be the kind of civic societies we used to have. We could expect, in a nation that had restored the powers of moral self-government to the states and localities, for these civic societies, clubs and organizations to arise and function to keep tabs on what locals and other places are doing and organize to defend folks from fanatic extremism.

Additionally, as the cultural outlines of the newly re-founded nation become clear, we will probably enter into a time of folks relocating to live in communities within which they find a better personal fit. Even though this process of moving to some better place will probably never end (it goes on today), since new generations with new desires for life continue to be born, after a while it will slow down. In the end, almost by definition, we will be in a nation with more harmony, certainly between neighbors in community and probably between communities. There will simply be much less to fight about.

Even further, by allowing stark cultural differences between communities and allowing individuals to migrate between them, we will cause the idea of “the consent of the governed,” to gain some real traction in the hearts and minds of the people. We will thereby greatly increase the legitimacy and hence stability of government. This renewed sense of the legitimacy of government will grow organically because we will all have much more of a hand in our own governance and not be stuck merely accepting what was done by those in the past. We, as individuals, will be much more able to consent (or not) to our own governance.

The next item on the agenda of re-founding our nation will be to end corporate personhood and any affiliated, peripheral, legal doctrines which have worked to take the powers of economic self-determination away from people in their communities. This will be a more problematic change than the changes around moral self-government for a number of reasons.

First of all, since the change to corporate personhood was murkier than the twisting of the First Amendment, the remedy to the problem is not so easy to identify. Assuming, once again, that the vast majority of the people desire this change to take place, there would be a number of ways we might proceed.

For one thing, we could possibly use that same check in Article III, Section 2 quoted earlier. It gives congress power to “.... make exceptions. . .and... regulations...” to the court's appellate jurisdiction, which could be a way to return the powers of corporate chartering and regulation to the states. Another way might be by some new statute, or even some new Amendment to the Constitution, which rescinds the doctrine of corporate personhood. Whatever means we would employ, we would still want to proceed with calm deliberation and patience.

Unlike the case with the powers of moral self-government, the business world might not immediately, in a healthy way, fill the vacuum created by states once again exercising the powers of corporate regulation. A thriving economy needs a stable investment environment so any major change like this, once the concept gets accepted, should affect changes in planned phases . We will not want to recklessly destroy community benefiting businesses while we are otherwise engaged in trying to clean up the mess. In other words, the economy is a living thing and should be modified with great care and compassion.

What's more, in order to empower states and communities to once again regulate corporations, we will, as a nation, probably have to withdraw from most, if not all, of the international trade agreements we have entered into. This is because most of them, and certainly the big one, the WTO (or GATT), have abrogated such regulation, taking those powers away from our federal congress and even the federal courts. These agreements have handed corporate regulation over to anonymous international boards set up to adjudicate disputes in secret and whose rulings cannot be appealed. Any withdrawal from these treaties will probably require at least six months advance notice.

As we start to make this change, we can expect the voices of commerce to howl mightily that the path we are following will destroy civilization. They will fight against it like cornered wild animals. Ending corporate personhood promises to be one of the monumental battles of the ages.

When we do make these changes, however, those same economic actors will calm down, find new ways to make a profit, and learn to share in the resulting cultural benefits along with the rest of us. In other words, with enough clear eyed determination, we can actually return the powers of economic self-determination to our communities and eventually even most of the rich folks will come to appreciate it.

The third area of major reforms that must be undertaken in the re-founding of our republic is the area of all those social and related programs from the time of FDR, and the socialism that came after him, and even the mistakes from the earlier Progressive era. This is a huge morass of issues that have little or no relation to each other and thus defy some kind of single remedy. Most of them have little or no constitutional basis and, even the ones which were constitutionally established, such as the IRS, or direct election of senators, violate some core principles of American governmental philosophy and should be revisited.

Confronted as we are by this huge morass, this tangled ball of spaghetti, our own Gordian knot so to speak, we must first decide how to proceed. There is a saying that the best way to eat an elephant, if one must deal with that problem, is one bite at a time. Using that logic in dealing with this Gordian knot of issues, it will be wise to proceed with a continuing resolution in Congress.

Such a resolution will require an honest listing of all the functions the federal government has taken on without having proper constitutional delegation. Along with the list, the resolution will call on Congress to either devolve each of the functions of government back to the states, propose and ratify some new amendment to the Constitution to delegate that function to the federal government, or to find some such delegation of power in the existing body or amendments of the Constitution. It must also stipulate that a finding of delegation like that must rely on an originalist, plain reading of the Constitution and not be concocted out of the penumbra or supposedly hidden meaning of some old words. Additionally, we must not allow the underhanded use of either the commerce clause or the general welfare clause as a way to cover everything imaginable, in other words as a rationale for totalitarian government. It is delusional to assert that the founders meant to establish that kind of government with those words.

As each new session of congress met and took up that same resolution, the huge morass of issues will get smaller. In most cases, the remedy will consist of safely and, perhaps in a phased way, returning some function of government to the states or localities. On some few issues, we might determine that it would be better to enshrine that function at the federal level via a new constitutional amendment. Over time, we would approach unto the goal of the continuing resolution, which is to get to where the activities of the federal government comply completely with the words written in the Constitution. This would be a glorious work even if we never completed it perfectly, and a tremendous gift to bestow on our descendants.

Throughout the process of restoring LCMSG, the forces and interests which have benefited so much from us losing our free and self governing republic will ferociously fight against our every move. They will object to losing their power over us. Make no mistake, their resistance will be formidable and their arguments, while false, will be difficult for people to see through.

The first argument will be ridicule, and that will be reinforced by asserting that our modern lives and conveniences, our high tech society, are dependent on maintaining both centralized government and centralized big corporations. While that seems, at first blush, to be a strong point, on further examination it collapses.

The reason is that our high tech civilization is not really the product of either big government or big corporations, but rather it is the result of the ongoing industrial revolution. While that revolution has been greatly aided by the American Patent office, that office was established and working productively long before the era of big business or big government. In fact, a strong case can be made that big government interference with the patent office (corrupt politicians making sure that some patents are extended much longer than they should be) has inhibited our technological growth. The same case can be, and is, made that big business has long had a practice of buying up patents which might cause existing products to lose market share and hiding them away from public use.

Another strong example of the idea that it is technology, not big government or big business, which has enabled our modern advantages, is that of summer fruit being sold in our groceries during winter. A few years ago the point was made that this benefit is possible only because of the big GATT treaty. The response is- bananas.

That's right bananas, which also come from the tropics, and have been available for decades during our long northern winters, without those trade treaties. The reason we can now purchase mangoes, starfruit, melons, kiwifruit, and other tropical or summer delights during our winters is not because of the trade treaties, but because jet travel has become inexpensive enough to make those summer fruits affordable. Bananas ripen much more slowly, and because of that have traditionally been transported by banana boats for good profit. It was the new technology, not big government or big business or big international treaties that made summer fruits available in winter. In the same way, it is the ongoing technological revolution that enables our modern lifestyles, and not the dubious benefits of either big business or big government.

The Open Media

This bring us to the major obstacle we have to overcome to get our Republic founded again. That obstacle is the second malfunction, the fact that we still have a media controlled by the big money interests. While the process of putting our Republic back together makes sense, and it should be workable, the fact is that it has no chance of succeeding as long as we still have no free marketplace of ideas. With their control of the media, big tech, education, publishing and virtually any other source of information, not only can we not win the debate, the truth is we can never even get the debate started. Their control of the media is virtually total, which is how we got into this mess in the first place.

The solution to this impasse is to do what was done in Ancient Athens in time of crisis, and that is to establish a public forum so these ideas can be discussed, even if the rich and powerful don't want that discussion to take place. One way we might be able to establish this long needed free marketplace of ideas is called the Open Media Amendment, and is explained in this linked post

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-open-media.html

So there we have it, the plan that explains how, and why, we can save America. The first thing we have to do is establish the Open Media by way of ratifying one new constitutional amendment. This will be the battle of the ages, which will require each of us to hold on to this revolutionary idea in the face of relentless bombardment from the worst, most effective brainwashing and indoctrination machine the world has ever known. We would be wise to not even consider entering this battle until and unless we are fully persuaded that we want to be free and self governing citizens again.

Especially when the alternative they will offer is to remain as essentially fat, tame, and docile house cats. That seems to be a good, easy, albeit boring and purposeless life, but it is a much easier life than the life of a free citizen. The only real drawback to that life as a dependent house cat of the fascist oligarchy is when it is recognized that the ultimate destination of that life is to become either a slave or a batch of taco meat. If that doesn't appeal to you, then consider taking on the role, powers and challenges of being a free citizen. Set your heart and mind to it and realize the battle begins by getting an Open Media Amendment ratified.

Once we establish the Open Media, empowering ourselves with a true public forum, the battle will be just getting started. The Open Media will not be just about reestablishing LCMSG. It can't be, because everyone will be able to bring up whatever subject they want. But those of us who want to be free again would be able to use it to that purpose. Then, every other reform detailed here could be carried out, one reform at a time. But we will have to vigorously insist on getting this entire agenda carried out, every step of the way.

Then we could get the First Amendment back to its original use, enabling us to live much more moral lives, and to teach morality to the young in our schools. Then we could end corporate personhood, enabling us to put the corporate beast back on a short leash of community accountability. Then we could restore almost all the powers and responsibilities of government back to local control, and return our Constitution to actually meaning what it says.

With all those changes, we would transform ourselves from being passive sheeple and back into being active, engaged and moral citizens. In that mode, with all the people groups of the world together, for the first time, as free and self governing Americans, we will start to harvest the delightful fruit of Liberty. We will have much more social harmony, prosperity, understanding and peace, domestically and with the world in general.

Most importantly, with that structure of Local Community Moral Self Government revived and fully functioning, we will find that we really do, as a people, have an ever rising social and spiritual consciousness. When that is combined with an ongoing Open Media, we could feasibly be looking at the genesis of a Golden Age, in America, and probably in the whole planet. That would be the fruit of our quest for freedom, and it is much more attractive than the future of a slave ship earth offered by the non freedom alternatives.

In conclusion we, the people, can now proceed, informed about the steps necessary to restore our republic. What's more, let us be motivated to take on this glorious work because we now understand the great blessing American Liberty will be, once it is restored, to our souls, spirit, and culture. Now, let us consider how perfectly appropriate this revolutionary movement is by recalling some of the words from what is probably the most important political document ever written; Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence.

It starts, “When in the course of human events. . .”

Blah, blah blah. Skip some of it to get to the good parts.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: - that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; ...”

Skip some more to get to the really powerful and for our purposes, pertinent section

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

This essay has revealed the long train of abuses and usurpations we have been subjected to. What's more, it is pretty clear that these abuses “evince a design to reduce them (us) under absolute despotism.” In other words, it shows there is a conspiracy in motion to enslave us. Yes, that is undeniably what it means, and it was signed by some truly great men.

So it says we have a right and duty to throw off such government. Happily, because this is the United States of America, the alternative government we reach for after throwing this one off doesn't have to be something new and untested. Rather, we have merely to return to, re-found, the architecture and dynamics of the government we were originally founded on.  The American experiment in self government has been conducted, and it proved that Liberty works.  We should get back to it.

It says we have a duty to make this change. This is, of course, a duty we owe first of all to ourselves, each other, and our descendants, but it goes much further than that. Since our nation is so rich and so powerful, our duty to control our government is a duty we owe to all our fellow human beings.

What’s more, our off-the-leash government has led to an off the leash commercial empire, and a totally out of control industrial revolution. That has caused a huge amount of human suffering while rendering humanity into a virtual cancer on the face of the planet. Consequently, our duty also extends to the plants and animals, nature, the planet as a whole, and even to the Creator of all nature. We have an absolute, urgent duty to get control of our government, our corporations, and the hideous technological beast they have spawned.

We thus have a right and a duty to reverse the downfall of our republic, and we now have the knowledge of how to do that, and an understanding of why it is so important.

May our Creator grant us the requisite courage, wisdom, faith, mutual regard, understanding, respect and love to answer this challenge. May God continue to bless the United States of America and grant us to once again become a blessing to the entire planet.

E Pluribus Unum

https://lifeinafascistcountry.blogspot.com/2025/02/afterword.html

read this afterword too

How the First Amendment was Stolen

 

How the First Amendment Was Turned Precisely on Its Head

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The third major usurpation, which is another major force breaking down American culture, is the mistaken idea that our nation is founded on separation of church and state, and that the First Amendment guarantees to each of us freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly.

The truth of the matter is that every system of government humans have ever forged together has been based on someone's unproven set of moral beliefs. Whether you're talking about Secular Humanism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism or whatever, every system of government ever devised is necessarily tied to some unproven set of moral beliefs, some unproven belief system.

The genius of the American system is that the Founders recognized this inevitable intertwining of church and state, along with the cultural issues of speech, press and such that goes with it. Instead of merely trying to prevent some form of federal religion, they also did not want the federal Congress to make any law that could control what any state might do with religion.

Clearly, the words of the amendment, especially the word “respecting” lead to the conclusion that the federal Congress is not to make any law, for or against, any establishment of religion. In one clever wording it both prevents the feds from establishing their own religion, and it keeps them from interfering with any state that might want to.

So the founders didn't even try to prevent any establishment of religion at the state level. In fact some of them probably favored such establishments. Nine of the original thirteen states had established religions as the Constitution came into being. Instead of trying to prevent any kind of state level theocracy, the Founders were intent on preventing any particular religion from being established at the federal level, from where it might gain undue influence over the other religions.

It must be admitted that almost every person in this country, from far right to extreme left, and everyone in between, agrees with this mistaken notion of freedom. It must be assumed, therefore, that is must be one of the last vestiges of unity we have remaining to us. The opposite is true. This mistaken notion of separation of church and state works, on a molecular level, to divide us as people. It is only when we restore to ourselves the proper exercise of the powers of moral self-government, as a necessary expression of Local Community Moral Self Government, that we can reforge the kind of unity that a diverse and self-governing people must have. If this misbegotten central error is not reversed, we will never return to being the nation we were founded to be nor will we ever again be the shining light of liberty that was always our promise.

In reality, the First Amendment has been stolen from us. We, the people have been completely flim-flammed on this issue over the course of a number of decades. The best part of this con-job, from the point of view of the con-men, is that we, the victims of the con, are passionately convinced that the flim flam is the truth. The perfect crime has been committed because the victims are convinced that they are the beneficiaries. What we don't realize is that this 180 degree twisting of the First Amendment is at the heart of what has gone so wrong with our beloved nation. The sad but inescapable truth is that the mythical “separation of church and state” we have so completely committed to as a people is an inevitably tyrannical philosophy of government.

The backward, sideways, and convoluted process used in twisting the First Amendment is typical of how all three major usurpation were accomplished, and is a long involved story that will take some time to tell. It is a task made more difficult because the people must be persuaded, by logic, to understand something that they emotionally don't want to understand. Rest assured, that the positive emotional benefits of restoring a true use of the First Amendment will be explained satisfactorily.

Let us first clear up a misunderstanding. While a separation of church and state is impossible, it is possible to not have religious ceremonies conducted at government functions and to have no officially sanctioned religion or to require people to attend church. That is possible.

On the other hand, to insist that we will not have any morality informing the passing of laws, or any morality guiding how we hand out public assistance and welfare, or any morality informing us about what we think is right and wrong about education, or what we teach the children, or any other imaginable infringement of church into state. That is impossible.

There was a great social cliche from the 1960’s that we can’t legislate morality. At first glance, like a lot of the stuff out of the 60’s, it sounds great. Folks like to do immoral things, and hearts and minds can’t be changed by passing laws. When looked at in a deeper way though, it is revealed as pure drivel because every law ever passed is an attempt to legislate morality, at least as it involves actions. Every law, from laws against murder and theft to laws about corporate policy or fraud or land zoning, are based on someone’s idea about what is right and wrong. Once enacted into legislation, these moral opinions are given the force of law and imposed by the power of the state.

Take, for example, some of the most basic moral lessons we teach in this society. Who says that kindergartners have to line up in rows and that girls should go to the girl's rest room, and boys go to the boy's rest room? What the hey, if we're going to have a total nihilism, why should they be taught to line up or take turns or be educated in the first place? Who says they shouldn't hit each other?

So, okay, most sane folks will agree that we must teach some form of morality. The question then becomes, "whose" morality will be taught? The founders of the American Republic recognized this inevitable intertwining of morality, education, and religion before the Constitution was even written in the Northwest Ordinance (1787), which states,

"Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

As a short aside, this dedicated use of education to instill morality was seen as necessary by the Founders. They lived in a mostly agrarian society in which they spent a great deal of time with their children. They still thought that the schools should systematically teach the children to think in a moral way. Today, in a time when parents spend much less time with their children, many argue that any morality should be taught at home and the schools should be reserved for teaching the values of the state. This makes one wonder what kind of morals, or lack thereof, some want to teach our children.

That dovetails with a much deeper point. Thomas Jefferson, immediately after penning the Declaration of Independence, returned to the Virginia House of Burgess's and rose to advocate for doing away with the Church of England as the established church of Virginia. Jefferson said at that time,

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical."

Given the wide diversity of opinion in this nation on almost any subject touching law and morality, how are any opinions going to be mandated from the level of the federal government. How can laws be crafted affecting hundreds of millions of people without forcing someone to “furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves…”? It is impossible not to violate someone’s beliefs if morality is to be legislated at the federal level. So, the question grows, to not only be whose morality will be followed but also to ask what level of government is most appropriate to this purpose?

This is the point the Founders came to in writing the First Amendment.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, came about because many of the original states approved the Constitution only on the condition that certain provisions would be added limiting the powers of the central government and reserving certain rights and powers to the people and the states. The vast majority of the populace insisted on these provisions because they wanted to prevent the kinds of religious and political oppression they had seen acted out by the strong central governments of Europe.

When the First Congress passed the First Amendment, and sent it to the states for ratification, it was never intended to be what it has become, a limit on what the states can legislate regarding speech, press, or religion. What's more, Congress did consider such limits on the states and rejected the idea or, to be more precise, the ideas. One of the two proposals which were later combined into the First Amendment dealt with speech and press, and the other dealt with religion.

In the book, "Religious Liberty in America," Glenn T. Miller writes,

"The history of the wording of the first clause of the First Amendment is significant for its interpretation. The House of Representatives first adopted this reading: 'Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be abridged.' This was the most comprehensive form proposed. Two problems appeared in the Senate. The first problem was a movement to change the wording in the direction of permitting a multiple establishment of religion throughout the nation. One form that this proposal took was: 'Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination of religion in preference to another or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be abridged.' This was defeated. The second problem was a concern that the federal government not be permitted to interfere with religious establishments where they either existed or might exist. This concern shaped the wording decisively. The section on the rights of conscience was deleted and stress was placed on the prohibition of congressional action. The Senate sent this version to the House: 'Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion.' Since this leaned too far in the direction of the New England type of Holy Commonwealth, the House finally passed this version: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' The Senate concurred. In its final form, the First Amendment was designed to prevent any federal interference with religion. Congress could not pass a law establishing a church; nor could it pass a law disestablishing a church. The question of faith was, thus, reserved to the states for their action and their action alone. Should it prove necessary to pass laws regulating religion, as it would be if the churches were to hold property, they would be state laws."^1.

Make no mistake, this is very radical stuff. It means that the states were allowed to set up official religions, while the federal government wasn’t. This explains the word “respecting” being included in the language of the First Amendment.

This might sound like utter blasphemy to people raised with the modern myth that there has to be a total wall of separation between church and state, but the fact of the matter is that many of the original states had established religions, and there was no thinking that this was in any way repugnant to the Constitution. In fact, taxes to support churches were levied well into the 1800's, and requirements that state office holders swear to religious beliefs were on the books until as late as the 1940's. It's true that they had been largely ignored since the 1850's, but they were on the books, and they fell into disuse only because of popular fashion and not due to any constitutional problems.

We can find verification of this interpretation of the First Amendment by looking at the words of no less a friend of liberty than Thomas Jefferson (who first coined the phrase “wall of separation between church and state”). Consider "The Kentucky Resolutions," which he wrote (anonymously because he was John Adams’ Vice-President at the time) in 1798, in opposition to the Adams’ administration’s Alien and Sedition Acts. In Section 3, he writes (emphasis added):

“Resolved That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that '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'; and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution , nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed. And thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same, as this State, by a law passed on the general demand of its citizens, had already protected them from all human restraint or interference. And that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, and the more special provision had been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares, that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press': thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press: insomuch, that whatever violated either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals. That, therefore, the act of Congress of the United States, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, intituled "An Act in addition to the act intituled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," which does abridge the freedom of the press, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force." 2,

In short, Jefferson, and the framers of the Constitution, understood the First Amendment to mean that it absolutely forbade the federal, or general, government from restricting any speech, censoring any book or paper, or establishing or interfering with any religion. On the other hand, they saw that it was perfectly proper for the states to be involved with any of those activities, if the citizens so decided in a free republic.

Just in case someone might think that the preceding thoughts from Thomas Jefferson came in the heat of battle with John Adams, and were later repented of, consider what President Jefferson said on the occasion of his second inauguration in 1805,

"In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies."

Within the context of state control, Jefferson fought vigorously for minimal government, which is why we can find so many of his writings calling for an almost absolute freedom of speech, press, and religion. Regardless, he clearly would have been against establishing even his own ideas of religion at the federal level.

That's the way things stood in this country, at least until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified as part of reconstruction after the Civil War, uncertainty and confusion reigned in Washington D.C. No one knew exactly how to put the country back together again, and the victorious North (rudderless after Lincoln's assassination) did not want to lose in Congress what had been won on the battlefield. So one thing the "Radical" Republicans wanted to ensure was that state and local laws were enforced equally, especially in regard to the just freed slaves. For that purpose, they enacted the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which reads.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Some people think this all important first section of the Fourteenth Amendment is unnecessary as the Constitution already guarantees equal enforcement of the laws. They overlook the fact that whether or not freed African-Americans could be full citizens was the central question that had been denied in the infamous Dred Scott decision. Rep. John A. Bingham, of Ohio, the chief author of the amendment, was absolutely correct in bringing the whole notion of the first section of the Fourteenth forward because of the Dred Scott case and because we consequently needed a Constitutional delegation of power in order for Congress to have clearly legitimate authority in pursuing a civil rights agenda.

Mr. Bingham once said, in advocating ratification of the Fourteenth, that, "It is a simple, strong, plain declaration that equal laws and equal and exact justice shall hereafter be secured within every state..." So, what does this have to do with the First Amendment? Unfortunately, all the separation of church and state stuff grew out of wrongly applying the First Amendment to the states, and that in turn is based on a misuse of the Fourteenth Amendment. To once again resort to Mr. Miller’s “Religious Liberty in America”,

"These problems arose after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment broadened the authority of the Federal Government. They would not have arisen under the original wording of the Constitution and the First Amendment, nor would many of the issues that divide us today have arisen under it. To cite one example, if the state of New Jersey had chosen to promote religious rather than public education, it would have been entirely within the Constitutional provisions to do so. It is not surprising, therefore, that few cases concerning religious matters reached the Supreme Court before the Civil War." ^3.

The only correction to be made to Mr. Miller’s thinking is to point out that these changes didn’t occur immediately after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, given the moral temper of the times, if the American people circa 1868 would have even suspected that approval of the Fourteenth would result in federal mandates of atheism in the schools, legal flag burning, and pornography in public, they would never have ratified it.

Even though the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to ensure the rights of full citizenship to freed Black former slaves, it was only used for that purpose in a confused and halfhearted way. Much of that confusion has stayed with the issue until the present day. The primary use the Fourteenth Amendment was put to in the 1800's was to bestow most of the rights of American citizenship onto corporations, making them immune to most state controls, the issue of corporate personhood from an earlier post.

Cruikshank

It only gradually started to be applied to both civil rights and First Amendment issues well into the Twentieth century after the 1930's. Actual enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment, as written and intended; to ensure full citizenship for all, regardless of race, finally began in the 1960's as a result of the Civil Rights Movement.

So, the question remains; how did the First Amendment get dragged into this? It was seventy years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment before the Supreme Court started applying speech, press, and religious standards onto the states. They used the rationale that the First Amendment was to be applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges or immunities" language. They reasoned that the First was thus contained within the Fourteenth Amendment. The subject didn't even come up until 1905. Here's where it starts to get all sideways, backwards and convoluted, so be prepared. The beginning of the fallacy can be traced back to 1875 and the case of U.S. v Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542,552.

Cruikshank was a case in which a group of African-Americans was seeking redress in the Supreme Court, under the Fourteenth Amendment. They had been repeatedly accosted by White citizens when they (the Blacks) tried to attend peaceful political meetings. Since the Court was in no mood, in the waning days of Reconstruction, to see the Fourteenth Amendment properly applied, they ruled against the Blacks, seeing nothing being done wrong by the State of Louisiana, and hence no trigger for the Fourteenth Amendment. In a snide little piece of dictum to the side, they let it be known that if said group had been meeting to petition the federal Congress, then the court might have ruled in their favor.

Key parts of the key paragraph read,

"...right of people...petitioning Congress. If it had been alleged in these counts that the object of the defendants was to prevent a meeting for such a purpose, the case would have been within the statute, and within the scope of the sovereignty of the United States."

The Court here makes the original mistake of misreading the First Amendment. Even if some group of citizens is meeting to petition the federal Congress, the First remains solely a limit on congressional action. The Congress of the United States can't make a law to try to stop them, but the states remain free to. It does not, even then, become an individual right which the various states are required to protect. To offer an extreme argument, are the states required to allow even riotous behavior to continue if the participants claim to be meeting to petition the federal Congress? Of course not. While the Court was remiss in its duty to ensure equal protection to the Blacks, it's false advice to them made matters worse.

The Court is here misinterpreting, in a small way, the same question it continues to misinterpret, in a big way, today. It is a very big question, at the heart of our misuse of the First Amendment. How can a limit on Congress magically become a guarantee of individual privilege, and hence a limit on the States instead?

That's the sideways part. Now for how all this came in through the back door. In Patterson v Colorado, 205 U.S. 454, 462, (1905), the Court upheld a Colorado law prohibiting the publication of subversive literature. In his lone dissent, Mr. Justice Harlan held forth on the need for the entire First Amendment to be contained within the power of the Fourteenth Amendment. He forcefully argued that we need total freedom of speech and press in order to be American society, and yet the only relevant legal precedent cited for this view was that little piece of racist dictum from Cruikshank.

Even that revered ruling was twisted out of all recognition, taking what was a limited aside, and converting it into a mandate that the entire First Amendment must be applied to the states. Asserting that the country must consequently be thrust into absolute freedom of speech and press and separation of church and state. His dissent is so powerful, (Probably the best single court statement ever written advocating our modern reading of the First Amendment), and later proved to be so influential, that it will be presented here in full. Apologies for the lengthy legalese word salad, but this issue warrants the effort required to read and understand it.

Harlan's Dissent

"I cannot agree that this writ of error should be dismissed.

By the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.' In the Civil Rights cases, 109 U.S.1,20, it was adjudged that the Thirteenth Amendment, although in form prohibitory, had a reflex character in that it established and decreed universal civil and political freedom throughout the United States. In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 552, we held that the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances one of the rights recognized in and protected by the First Amendment against hostile legislation by Congress was an attribute of 'national citizenship.' So the First Amendment, although in form prohibitory, is to be regarded as having a reflex character and as affirmatively recognizing freedom of speech and freedom of the press as rights belonging to citizens of the United States; that is, those rights are to be deemed attributes of national citizenship or citizenship of the United States. No one, I take it, will hesitate to say that a judgment of a Federal court, prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, impairing or abridging freedom of speech or of the press, would have been in violation of the rights of 'citizens of the United States' as guaranteed by the First Amendment, this, for the reason that the rights of free speech and a free press were, as already said, attributes of national citizenship before the Fourteenth Amendment was made a part of the Constitution.

Now, the Fourteenth Amendment declares, in express words, that 'no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.' As the First Amendment guaranteed the rights of free speech and of a free press against hostile action by the United States, it would seem clear that when the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the States from impairing or abridging the privileges of citizens of the United States it necessarily prohibited the States from impairing or abridging the constitutional rights of such citizens to free speech and a free press.

But the court announces that it leaves undecided the specific question whether there is to be found in the Fourteenth Amendment a prohibition as to the rights of free speech and a free press similar to that in the First. It yet proceeds to say that the main purpose of such constitutional provisions was to prevent all such 'previous restraints' upon publications as had been practiced by other governments, but not to prevent the subsequent punishment of such as may be deemed contrary to the public welfare. I cannot assent to that view, if it be meant that the legislature may impair or abridge the rights of a free press and of free speech whenever it thinks that the public welfare requires that to be done.

The public welfare cannot override constitutional privileges, and if the rights of free speech and of a free press are, in their essence, attributes of national citizenship, as I think they are, then neither Congress nor any State since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment can, by legislative enactments or by judicial action, impair or abridge them. In my judgment the action of the court below was in violation of the rights of free speech and a free press as guaranteed by the Constitution.

I go further and hold that the privileges of free speech and of a free press, belonging to every citizen of the United States, constitute essential parts of every man's liberty, and are protected against violation by that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbidding a State to deprive any person of his liberty without due process of law. It is, I think, impossible to conceive of liberty as secured by the Constitution against hostile action, whether by the Nation or by the States, which does not embrace the right to enjoy free speech and the right to have a free press."

And so, Mr. Justice Harlan concluded in 1905. Mark this passage, because we will return to critique it in detail, both legally and philosophically, because this dissent changed our national thinking. The second reason Harlan's dissent is so important is that this is the only place the Court reveals any in depth thinking on this subject until 1947. What happened after 1905 is the Court said nothing on the subject for fifteen years and then, in the 1920's, continued the dialogue by simply stating, without comment or explanation, that the Court saw the First Amendment contained within the Fourteenth Amendment, seeming to have accepted Justice Harlan's reasoning.

In the first of these cases, Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U.S. 325, (1920), a case about a Minnesota law against advocating pacifism, Justice Brandeis, in dissent, saw no occasion to consider if the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment but that such a subject was within the Court's domain was assumed. Then again, in Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, (1925), the Court asserts, without stating why, that under the First Amendment, as contained in the Fourteenth Amendment, it has the authority to define the limits of speech and press. It then obscures and confuses the point (typical SCOTUS behavior on this issue) by agreeing with the lower court and upholding the conviction on different grounds..

The court had previously ruled, during the First World War, that the phrase "no law" in the First Amendment didn't stop the federal government from restricting seditious publications in war time. Combined with their assumed authority over peace time First Amendment issues, they then had the potential of generating some kind of federal definition of free speech, and applying it to the states. This all slid together when, under newly appointed Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Court overturned, for the first time (1931), some of the state's laws regarding press and speech. Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359, and Near v. Minnesota, U.S. 283.

Minor cases of the same sort continued through the depression and the war years, until 1947, when the final great case in this chain of convoluted, backward mistakes around the First Amendment was heard. In Everson v Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, the Court, using the now large number of minor cases as precedent, dictated at length about its power to define how intertwined a local school board could be with a local church. It was in this case that the terms "separation of church and state,” “establishment clause" and “free exercise clause” first appeared in an official Court ruling. In its typically convoluted and backward way, the Court upheld, for other reasons, the local school board's decision to use public school buses to transport parochial school students.

These radical new concepts were left to simmer silently into the Constitution for more than a decade and were then unleashed on a credulous and astonished nation. To again quote from Glenn T. Miller’s “Religious Liberty in America”,

"The most revolutionary action in the area of religion and education was in the cases of Engel v. Vitale (1962), School District of Abington Twp. v. Schempp (1963), and Murray v. Curlett (1963). The decisions in these cases outlawed the traditional practice of beginning the school day with devotions, usually prayer and Bible reading. The decisions were based on a strict reading of the First Amendment's anti-establishment clause, but they clearly went beyond the nation's traditional understanding of what that clause did or did not mean."4^.

The public outcry against this new assertion of federal power was muted at the time, probably due to the fact that any (honest) journalists looking into it found that the principle of separation of church and state had been declared more than a decade earlier, with reams of precedent and no public objection. Furthermore, since we had let the federal government take over so much of the business of governmental services it didn't seem to matter. The move to place all issues of morality and moral education under federal control, with social programs running on federal auto-pilot, didn't seem to threaten the day-to-day well-being of the citizenry. One usurpation had culturally paved the way for the next usurpation. The people let this new Court ruling go unchallenged.

There then followed the entire odious train of rulings regarding freedom of expression, speech, and religion throughout the latter part of the Twentieth Century. Pornography had to be allowed in almost all communities, along with lewd and topless dancing, subversive literature, and flag burning. Then, in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner, the Court allowed some controls on speech, such as laws against ethnic intimidation and hate speech.

Evolution could not be taught in public schools, nor could the Bible be taught, if even just as an historical document. Many forms of sexual deviance could be, and maybe even must be taught in those same schools, however, because it was asserted to be the morally right thing to do. So the teaching of morality again came down to “Whose?” morality.

At the same time, any expression of religious sentiment was banned from any public function. Native American shaman were, however, encouraged to offer public blessings. Thus, our tortured national dance with the misused First Amendment has unfolded.

During this whole process the Supreme Court has projected a pretentious image of wisdom by first asserting that there can be no local, state, or federal controls on speech or press, and then relenting and admitting that there did need to be some such limits and that the Court would define what those limits would be. This began as far back as 1919, when Justice Holmes famously, and hypothetically, wrote in the case of Schenk v United States,

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” Further on, he formulated this. “The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

These sound like wise words and would be very wise indeed and entirely appropriate if uttered by a state legislator or a county judge. But in the setting of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, they must be seen for the beginning of a usurpation of power from state and local government that they are. Contrast this famous “clear and present danger” formulation with Jefferson’s comments from, once again, “The Kentucky Resolutions”

"...that thus was manifested their (the state's) determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged..."

Thus, while the Court presents itself as being so liberal and wise, this whole process of prohibiting state and local controls, and then admitting that there did have to be some controls that the Court would deign to deliver, has really been just a disingenuous way of usurping some of the powers of self-government from the states, the localities, and hence, the people.

In this whole process, from Harlan’s dissent forward, there is an almost conspiratorial aura to the whole affair. This is not necessarily because there was an actual conspiracy abroad in the land but rather because there is a school of philosophy abroad, which goes by the name of secularism or Secular Humanism. This school of philosophy, or belief system if you will, tried to assert itself at the original writing of the First Amendment with the idea that freedom of conscience should be protected from state interference. This same sentiment came up in Harlan’s dissent and now holds sway in this nation. The well-meaning folks who advance it probably don’t consider that they advocate violation of the Constitution. Rather, they wish so much that the Constitution did contain this concept of total separation of church and state and total freedom of speech and press that they think they see it there.

Whereas, the actual words of the First Amendment do not say that. Read it, presented at the beginning of this post. It is a single sentence that is clearly a prohibition on certain kinds of laws that the federal Congress is not to make. Since it is nothing but a prohibition on Congress, it is not a statement of privilege or immunity that accrues to the individual, and it is, therefore, not covered under the language of the Fourteenth Amendment. Consequently, just on the basis of a technical reading of the Constitution, the rulings of the Court are in error.

That, of course, is small beer compared to the fact that the general population has emotional attachment to this myth and has come to agree with the flawed legal arguments and philosophy behind it. The victims of this flim-flam really do consider themselves to be its' beneficiaries.

Legal and Philosophical Arguments

Let us now return to dispute the legal and philosophical flaws of the famous dissent from the highly esteemed Mr. Justice John Marshall Harlan (he also, admirably, dissented from the infamous Plessey v Ferguson ruling, which established the onerous racist federal doctrine of “separate but equal”).

Even though Harlan's was a lone dissent from the Court's opinion, it's noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First of all, in Patterson, the Court seemed to be engaging in a dialogue with Harlan, stating in its ruling that,

"We leave undecided the question whether there is to be found in the Fourteenth Amendment a prohibition similar to that in the First. But even if we were to assume that freedom of speech and freedom of the press were protected from abridgment on the part not only of the United States but also of the States, still we should be far from the conclusion that the plaintiff in error would have us reach."

We have already learned how that dialogue between Mr. Justice Harlan and the rest of the Court was resolved. It ended with Everson in 1947. A few notes should be made at this point about technical errors made in his dissent, so you might want to refer back to it..

In the second paragraph, he seems to be saying that free speech and press could not have been restricted by the Court because it was part of a national citizenship. This is a very technical but important mistake. The real reason the Court could make no such limit was Congress could make no law, and, therefore, the Executive had nothing to enforce and the Court had nothing to adjudicate. Contrast Harlan's view with Thomas Jefferson's, quoted from “The Kentucky Resolutions” that issues of speech, press, and religion "... are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals."

Also in the third paragraph, his reliance on the Thirteenth Amendment is misconceived. The Thirteenth Amendment reads,

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

This 13^th Amendment is clearly intended to apply to the states, having a “reflex character,” as Harlan terms it, and is not, like the First Amendment, a limit solely on Congress. The ruling he cites has nothing to do with the First Amendment, and he should be ashamed of equating the two amendments in this way.

In the third paragraph, Harlan is again making the leap, as in Cruikshank, where a limit on Congress is magically changed into an individual right, which in turn becomes a limit on the states.

In the Fourth paragraph, where he can't assent to the idea that legislatures can limit speech or press based on concerns of public welfare, Mr. Justice Harlan disagrees with another of Mr. Jefferson's views, this also from “The Kentucky Resolutions” quoted earlier "...that thus was manifested their (the state's) determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed.”

In the fifth paragraph, this "due process" stuff doesn't mean that states can't restrict liberty. Of course, they can, when someone is convicted, by due process, of violating a law. It also doesn't mean (and it occurs in both the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments) that the states are restricted from making certain types of laws limiting personal liberty. But it does mean that they must follow due process when enacting and enforcing such laws.

Finally, in the last paragraph, the good Mr. Justice Harlan might find it impossible to conceive of liberty without the absolute freedom of speech and press he calls for, but he had to ignore 130 years of prior American history to do so. What did he think he was doing, concocting some new fictional society?

This leads us to the philosophical discussion. The first issue to be wrestled with in this section is that separation of church and state is a myth that is impossible to achieve and very dangerous to pursue.

Think about what a total separation of church and state would actually entail. If we were to thoroughly apply a literal reading of the establishment of religion clause so that no law respecting any establishment of any religion (or belief system) could be passed to all levels of government under the Constitution, including federal, the system becomes absurd. Remember, every law is based on or informed by someone's unproven belief system.

A total application of the principal that no law can be made respecting an establishment of religion, or relying on any unproven system of moral beliefs in formulating our laws would be lead to absurdity. It would leave the federal government unable to make any law or ruling, for or against, any entanglement between any level of government and any moral code. The same limit would apply to the states, counties, and localities. If there were some already existent laws based on someone's moral assumptions, they would have to be left in place. Any new moral realizations, such as might arise because of the need for sound environmental policy, could not be enshrined in law. No laws could be enacted at any level of government based on what anyone thought was right or wrong.

Given our modern propensity for rooting out thought crimes, we might end up where it is illegal for an individual to have a moral, self-governing thought, or to advocate for anything, right or wrong. The individual is certainly the foundational level in self-government, and no law means “no” law. What's more, the word "respecting" means respecting. No level of government could make any law, for or against, any religion or moral assumption. Only a numb nihilism (belief in nothing) would be allowed, and even that couldn't be enforced.

There would be a plethora of sound, and more concrete, examples of how absurd this concept becomes. You say you want no no restrictions on press or speech? Then bring on the hard-core child pornography and bestiality and let’s put them on animated billboards. No restriction on speech means get ready for riot, and for idiots who will yell "fire" in crowded theaters.

So, separation of church and state, when we see that it necessarily means separation of the state from any unproven belief system with the total freedom of speech and press that necessarily goes along with that, is definitely an absurd and impossible notion.

Pursuing this myth is extremely dangerous because it is impossible to achieve. Just as when the Court prohibited state and local controls on speech and press only to substitute their own controls, they have also, by process of eliminating any reference to any deity, substituted an atheistic belief system and imposed it like an official religion on every level of government in America. This particular belief system, which is now our official, although studiously hidden, national belief system, is secularism or Secular Humanism.

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1979, definition of religion reads,

“3. (b) loosely, any system of beliefs, practices, ethical values, etc. resembling, suggestive of, or likened to such a system; as, humanism is his religion.”

Admittedly, this is not the only, or even the primary definition of religion offered by Webster (there are seven in this edition) but it is a valid one for our purpose because it highlights the notion that separation of religion and state is impossible, and it points to why it is such a dangerous myth to pursue. What we have done in pursuing this myth is to allow ourselves to be fooled into accepting an atheistic national religion. Most foolish and very dangerous indeed.

The term “secular” or “atheistic theocracy” deserves another short aside. “Theocracy” means rule by God. Unless you are a devout believer who might point to ancient Israel, you must admit that no such thing has ever existed on Earth. What humans do get, such as in modern Iran, is a nation run by folks according to their ideas about God. So, the word “Ideocracy” would be more accurate and, in a humorous way, more descriptive of what is going on in both Iran and America. All around the globe, we have “Ideocracy”, or, in other words, government based around someone’s ideas about what is right and wrong, whether that includes God or not. However, since “ideocracy” is a humorous term and hence doesn’t carry the same emotional weight, we will instead use “theocracy”, as in Secular Humanist theocracy.

The term "Atheistic Theocracy," while superficially a contradiction in terms, gets to the point about why it is so dangerous to pursue this myth of separation of church and state. We will never be able to arrive at that mythical, morally neutral foundation to our laws, but what has been done in trying to get there has been to systematically remove any reference to divinity in general and the Judeo-Christian God in particular.

The word atheism means, "Without God". It comes from the Latin, a -without, and Theo -God. By attempting to rid our entire civic structure of any reference to or reliance on God (or revealed ethics) we have succeeded not in building a wall of separation between government and any unproven religious-like belief systems. Instead, what we have done is to establish atheism (with-out-God-ism) as our official religion. No one is required to take an oath to it, or to attend any of its' meetings (they do have them) but all laws that are based on any other belief system will be struck down as unconstitutional.

What’s more, Atheism, or Secular Humanism, pretends to a moral superiority it hasn't earned: This is done by its' borrowing on the credibility that has been earned by the hard sciences. Secular Humanists then use this assumed moral superiority to simply dismiss any other point of view and forge ahead with their social and political agenda, ignoring cries of religious oppression and cultural genocide. The worst part is that they assert this supposed moral superiority while ignoring the fact that Secular Humanism has produced the most horror filled, deadly political regimes in history. Do the names Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ring a bell? They were all leaders of Secular Humanist governments.

Of course, the fact that they think their statistics and so-called logic render them morally superior is simply proof of the point that every legal system will always have a set of unproven moral assumptions at its base, and all of them will rely on their own writings. Whether it's Secular Humanism with its statistics and so-called logic, Catholicism with its teachings and traditions, Protestantism with its Bible, Islam with its Koran, or any other belief system. All belief systems have their own self referencing foundations and Secular Humanism is no exception..

The point of the First Amendment was not to avoid having someone’s idea about right and wrong kept from the councils of government but, rather, to prevent any particular belief system from being installed at the federal level. Since no system of government can completely avoid enshrining somebody’s ideas, and since all laws are based on somebody’s ideas, the genius of our system is that it reserved those kinds of religious entanglements to the state or local levels of government.

The Founders of this country wrote the First Amendment to prevent precisely the kind of oppression common in old Europe, and that occurred in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and China. Secular Humanism is just another religion among religions, (no worse, and certainly no better) and like all religions, it becomes really dangerous only when it is given too much power by being established in a centralized government. The Founders clearly intended that no particular religion be established at the federal level because they saw that a religion established at that level could exercise an oppressive advantage over all the other religions.

Any laws at the federal level are based on the Constitution, and its' amendments as written. Or we come to a new national consensus, proven by the Amendment process, about some particular moral conclusion, and that also becomes law. Our laws are never, however, to be based on any particular system of moral belief. For instance; when we, as a nation, decided to end slavery, or ensure women get to vote, we enshrined those particular moral conclusions in federal law by enacting new amendments. We didn't,however, base those laws on any belief system, nor did we establish any belief system by passing any amendment.

Seen in that light, the most important reason to get back to the original words, and reserve the powers mentioned in the First Amendment to the states and the people, is because that's the only way to deconstruct the national theocracy we have become; the very thing the Founders worked to prevent.

To sum up, this whole backward and convoluted process has set the First Amendment precisely on its head, taking the amendment the Founders intended to prevent the establishment of an official national belief system and, instead, using it as a rationale to establish an official national belief system.

Many will continue to argue that this is merely an attempt to revive the dead words of some dead White men. On the contrary, even though the words of the wise should be kept alive for their own sake, we should return to an honest use of the First Amendment because the society framed by the Constitution, one of Local Community

Moral Self Government, is far superior to our present system and much more likely to produce unity, peace, and contentment in the citizenry.

There is another important note to make about the philosophical problems caused by our modern reading of the First, and to make it we will return to the dissent of Mr. Justice Harlan. In the final paragraph he wrote:

“I go further and hold that the privileges of free speech and of a free press, belonging to every citizen of the United States, constitute essential parts of every man's liberty, and are protected against violation by that clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbidding a State to deprive any person of his liberty without due process of law. It is, I think, impossible to conceive of liberty as secured by the Constitution against hostile action, whether by the Nation or by the States, which does not embrace the right to enjoy free speech and the right to have a free press."

For the sake of deeper reasoning, let’s set aside the previously discussed absurdity of actual, literal enforcement of those rules and admit that there must be some limits on speech and press. Then let's even pretend it is appropriate for the federal courts to make those decisions. Even with all those stipulations, Harlan’s definition of liberty is still flawed, in that it posits a kind of atomized liberty. With his definition each person, as an atomized individual, has exactly the same homogenized liberties (and limitations) wherever in the nation they reside.

At first blush, Harlan’s atomized definition of liberty seems to empower the individual, and so must be moving in the best direction. He calls for everyone to have no limits on speech or press, so what could be freer than that? Remember though that as soon as the Court removed all the powers to limit speech and press from the states and localities, it usurped those same powers to itself. The Court declared, and continues to declare, in specific detail, how far those freedoms should go, where they should be limited, and retains the power to make any further changes to the definitions of free speech and press.

So, on deeper analysis it is seen that this atomized definition of liberty, this homogenized national sameness, actually dis-empowers and silences the individual. It renders almost any individual effort to change or improve the social environment pointless. All the real decisions in this atomized liberty are made behind closed doors thousands of miles away by authorities who don’t have to care what the individual thinks. Thus the individual citizen comes to feel that they have no real say in public affairs. Apathy is the inevitable result of atomized liberty.

In addition to apathy, the atomized liberty brought about by the usurpation of the powers of moral self-government by over centralized government has worked in three ways to keep a fascistic agenda going, and to work as an engine further destroying family, community, culture and national unity. The first of these three ways is the great division this faux liberty has spawned.

Monolithic Dichotomy

For the few people who remain politically involved there is little or no reason to form together in mature compromise with geographical neighbors. Instead, since all the real decisions of moral and cultural government are being made at the federal level, it makes sense to only work with whatever national party promises to place your kind of person in the Congress, the White House, and eventually the Supreme Court. Either our side forces our morality down their throats at the national level or they will force their morality down our throats. There is not very much reason to form common cause and forge reasonable compromises with your neighbors about much of anything.

Since at least the cases that threw prayer out of public schools, the only way for a person to get the kind of moral government that they might like is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to be composed of like-minded members. That sets up a political dynamic that necessitates being in lock step with a national organization, and getting both the Congress, President and Court that you desire. Any of us that care about lifestyle and moral issues (on either side of those issues) can feel very threatened and desperate to exert some control, and so we get in and stay in, lock step.

The fact that any kind of local or state accommodation has been made impossible by the federal Court drives us into the clutches of national organizations and creates the monolithic dichotomy of our modern politics. This monolithic dichotomy is a dynamic where each individual must become a supporter of one entire national agenda or the other to have even a hint of a chance to have their real concerns addressed. Then, we are at the mercy of the most distant and unaccountable level of government imaginable, the federal courts. The people as a whole can’t get together on the other major issues of economic and social self-government because we are hopelessly pitted against each other around the never to be resolved issues of moral self-government.

Consequently, to the normal, alienated, apathetic little person, with local community reduced to playing a never-ending game of big brother may I with the feds, and its every move subject to federal nullification, said little person doesn’t see much point in getting involved with the deliberations of local government. Nor do they sense any ability to make a difference in the deliberations at the federal level. Thus, the sense of being involved with self-government fades away from the little person, isolating them to family and a few friends, not really connected to a larger community.

Moreover, the usurpation of the powers of moral self-government causes not only division, but deep hostility in the hearts of many of the American people toward each other. Since, in this system, someone is always forced to “furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves”, we have been set at each other.

Our current political dynamic seems designed to get us to fight each other. Just as the quickest way to get two cats to fight each other is to tie their tails together, this perversion of our system has caused our mutual love of freedom to be used against us, causing us to engage in never-ending, vicious cultural warfare

The setting of the First Amendment precisely on its head has resulted in an apathetic, alienated and deeply divided citizenry, dovetailing perfectly with the effects of the other two major usurpations of corporate personhood and federal socialism.

A Secular Priesthood

The second way that the overturning of the First Amendment hurts us is that the secular humanist priesthood it empowered has worked to inculcate the population with selfish and materialistic thinking. Schools and the corrupt media, protected by the High priests on the Court, inundate us with the message that seeking our own self-gratification and self-esteem is what life is about, and that sexual license, greed, and manipulation of others is perfectly normal and acceptable.

A state or locality might try to buck the trend, by, for instance, casting doubt on the unproven theory that we came to be by a process of materialistic evolution, and that there might therefore be a moral component built into our lives. Any such effort is thrown out as an unconstitutional blending of church and state. Only the rankest form of materialism can be taught, because that is now the official religion.

When the young internalize these moral lessons, and come to see themselves as material creatures having no higher meaning than satisfying their material appetites, we shouldn’t wonder why. When these values leave us incapable of the kind of selfless, self-sacrificial thinking necessary for free self-governing communities to thrive, and that were common in days gone by, we should be very concerned for our future.

The third way that the overturning of the First Amendment threatens us is closely related to the second. If someone had come to our nation even as late as the 1950’s and tried to impose an authoritarian government on us, we would have fought them with every fiber in our beings. However, by removing the powers of moral self-government from our communities, and spending decades inculcating us with selfish values, that same authoritarian government won’t have to be imposed on us. Because of the breakdown in morality, and the resulting upswing in crime (we have more people in prison than any other nation in history) the people won’t just accept an authoritarian government being imposed on them, they will eventually demand it. Thus, the change in the use of the First Amendment has, as with the other usurpations, eroded our culture to the point we will accept even further degrading of our freedoms.

Returning to the original use of the First Amendment might frighten some because we have been rendered fearful of freedom, coming to think that our friends and neighbors are just waiting for the chance when we can enslave each other in some kind of religious theocracy. This is a very foolish fear, and ultimately based on the fear that none of us should be free because we, the people, can’t handle those kinds of moral decisions. To the contrary, we should realize that the people could handle freedom as well as our forefathers and foremothers did. Even if religious excess were to emerge in some small towns, it would be self-correcting as people could move, constitutional protections would still apply, and they could change things if life got crazy.

On the other hand, by continuing to pursue the unattainable myth of separation of church and state, we haven’t arrived, we can never arrive, at some gloriously neutral government immune from the excesses of unproven belief systems. Rather, we have put ourselves under the thumb of an unelected Secular priesthood that dictates right and wrong, based on its' unproven Atheistic beliefs, to the whole nation. This is precisely the situation the First Amendment was enacted to prevent.

Additionally, as we are saddled with the twin notions of the “separation clause” and the “establishment clause”, many well-meaning souls are constantly engaged in a futile effort to formulate a balance between the two that would enable the moral elevation of the citizenry while preserving the separation of church and state. This is an effort doomed to the same epic failure as the medieval quest to find the “philosopher's stone”, the mythical substance that would transform lead into gold. That stone never existed, and the myth of a separation of church and state can never exist either. Our national ship of state will break apart seeking for that impossible balance.

In enduring and enthusiastically embracing this usurpation and perversion of our First Amendment, we have become profoundly alienated from our essential role in self-government, and from each other as human beings. We simply must return to an honest use of the First Amendment if we are to revive our glorious Republic.

Footnotes:

^1. "Religious Liberty in America.” Glenn T. Miller,1976, The Westminster Press, p. 75

^2. “The Complete Jefferson.” Assembled and arranged by Saul K. Padover, Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, Inc., NY, NY 1943, p. 128-134

^3. “Religious Liberty in America,” p. 83

^4. Ibid p. 92