My.Declaration_of_Independence.Org Drawing a line in the sand for liberty, part 2
... Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, 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.
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Memorial Day, 2009
Over the past week, especially toward the end of it, I've been experiencing an avalanche of page visits to my Memorial Day Reflections, 2008 column. Though it's not on the level of Huffington Post numbers, lol[1], the identified page will have received nearly 3,000 hits by the end of this month. Wow. And I'm thrilled: Not only does that column a year ago express, as well as I can, how I feel on Memorial Day today, it expresses where we need to be, psychologically and spiritually, at this time as Americans confronting an oligarchical state running amuck.
IMHO[2] Memorial Day, which technically is a day we celebrate those who have died in US military service, should actually be a day we celebrate everyone who took a direct stand for fundamental liberty... whether by disobeying an unConstitutional law or defying—with some risk to their lives, persons, or property—the state's assaults, prohibitions, compulsions, or privileges. Or simply by insisting on upholding the rule of law as derived from the Constitution. That's why I remember so well, in my 2008 column, my late dad's adamant refusal to be seat belted come hell or SWAT team.
"This might be a good time to remember that this country emerged from a struggle in which people took up arms against England for the crime of taxation without representation, a trivial slight compared with those [crimes against the people] the US is now committing."
Basically, no one in our supposedly representative bodies is doing anything about these crimes... against us. And, as I point out in part one, the reason they are not doing anything about the problem is, "Everybody in the government (with a couple of exceptions) is an agent, either fully knowing or partially knowing, of the Oligarchy." On top of the humanitarian, police-state atrocities, the Oligarchy has been ripping the productive class off to the tune of multiple trillions[4] of dollars... recently as much as $7 trillion in a matter of a few years. What astounds me is how few realize that our economic plight is a direct consequence of political statism... or more precisely corporate-statism, i.e. fascism.
So my fellow humans, and American citizens in particular, please hear me: if we stand still and do nothing, "we'll all hang separately." We'll not only have lost—through the vast extraction of our material wealth—our right to make an honest living, we'll face imprisonment, torture, and death at the hands of the Ollie's police agencies. Pull your head out of the sand and look around; read my part-one column for the link documentation of our predicament, then consider signing your own, private personal declaration of independence along the lines I'm stating below.
We need to start by asserting our independence from the Oligarchy.
What I am writing here is a rough draft—I expect to be modified from reader input (please) at my Coffee Coaster blog—of a declaration of independence from the American branch of the Oligarchy. When the Declaration is finished, by July 4, 2009, I will place it on an interactive Web page which people may sign... either publicly or privately.
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As time goes by and our need to evolve becomes apparent, as sovereign individuals we must honestly assess the political institutions that lay claim upon our living energy and determine whether these claims rightfully apply. If not, we must decide—individually, peacefully, and voluntarily—whether to accommodate the political authority or to end the relationship... establishing a better system to satisfy our needs.
The current political authority in the United States, Earth, is a confluence of interests serving as an engine of plunder for the ultimate benefit of a (largely hidden yet) longstanding worldwide finance and central-banking cartel we may call the Oligarchy (Ollie). The Ollie (US branch) is demonstrable in the matrix of federal government actions that consist of lying to, cheating, stealing from, killing, and, now, torturing Americans and vast numbers of other human beings without restraint. We, the undersigned, will not tolerate these actions. We hereby deny the Ollie's moral legitimacy, we reject its authority, we withdraw our consent.
Respect for the judgment of other caring, intelligent beings of the world suggests that we state our reasons and intentions. Our reasons spring from the Ollie's innumerable criminal acts:
It raids the people's treasury, distributing trillions of dollars throughout its network of banking and corporate interests, without any meaningful accounting of funds.
It enables gross, routine civil liberties violations and miscarriages of justice by police-state functionaries —legislators, police, prosecutors, judges—who intimidate and jail innocent, peaceful civilians for no cause.
It tramples on the rights of hundreds of thousands of nonaggressive citizens to use, as well as produce and trade, pharmaceutical products of their own choosing.
It launches wars of conquest and empire, deceitfully creating threats where none exist; it creates massive fortunes for the war machine while crushing the bones of our soldiers and decimating the occupied lands... women and children, especially.
It has progressed up the ladder of state butchery by conceiving, authorizing, and implementing the most cruel and inhuman punishments... and inflicting them wantonly in defiance of the most elementary standards of decency.
It has endeavored to spend our grandchildren's inheritance and their grandchildren's inheritance and their grand... creating a mountain of financial obligation on the people that cannot be conceived, much less paid.
Its "homeland-security" thugs create thousands of American enemies per day by manhandling, incarcerating, intimidating, expropriating, and else inconveniencing honest, peaceful civilians of every nation and ethnicity.
It has falsely prosecuted and held in involuntary confinement citizens of other countries for violations of scores of statutes with no constitutional validity; it arbitrarily humiliates and/or destroys countless men and women merely "at the king's pleasure."
It prohibits farmers and merchants from earning a living growing or processing crops such as agricultural hemp that can end hunger, solve energy needs, depollute the planet, and rescue families from a life of destitution.
It continues to cover up and dissemble about the government's role in major political catastrophes of the last two centuries—including assassinations, initiations of wars, contriving intelligence information, and executing civilian massacres disguised as terrorist attacks.
It manufactures terrorism as a tool of domination.
It controls the money through central banks, operating in secret, as a vast legal counterfeiting scheme that enriches its insider friends (who are first to get the new money) while debilitating the people through an insidious inflation.
It attempts wildly to deceive Americans about the Constitution and the rule of law applied to federal taxes; it bullies those who show the income tax as an indirect tax applying solely to recipients of federal privilege.
It ravages property owners with eminent domain and other takings for private interests; it seeks via NAFTA and other corporate-state treaties to remove all normal, healthful Constitutional protections of property.
It maintains corporate privilege—private law—of legal personhood, limited liability, immunity from criminal prosecution, abrogation of individual rights in community, and so on... above civil protections of life and property.
It fosters government-forced schooling at the individual-state level, seeking a constant resource of indoctrinated, nonthinking cannon fodder and corporate-drone/ consumers; it compels obedience through military-draft registration.
It promotes compulsory domestic service—supported by surprising numbers of intellectuals of left and right—who mistake "following bureaucratic orders of miniature government dictators" with patriotism.
It interferes with the free choices of men, through prohibition, to enjoy various consensual activities, issuing the most severe penalties, enforced by swarms of armed officers, upon those who defy the slightest edict.
It seeks in numerous ways to disarm the citizenry of privately owned firearms, banning possession for individuals convicted of consensual "felonies;" in many states such noncriminals— numbering in the millions—are prohibited from voting or serving on juries... where they would nullify statist laws.
It increasingly militarizes the local police, preparing detention camps for political prisoners, and finding a president who would preventively detain without charges people seen by the executive as enemies of the state.
It compels farmers to identify animals irrespective of need and cost; it forces citizens to wait for years for medical cures, often banning them, causing untold illness and death; it permits corporations to pollute and destroy private property with no recourse.
It routinely denies, by administrative edict, every restraint against government power in the Bill of Rights; it conspires to hide from citizens the knowledge that as jury members they may determine law and fact... and refuse to convict for violations of bad law.
It violates privacy using unlawful surveillance and tracks the whereabouts of individuals through involuntarily installed ID systems and biometric devices; it dictates what medical procedures and what drugs shall be available and to whom.
Through its Patriot Act and its homeland-security apparatus, it kidnaps American citizens inside the country's borders; it removes children from their mothers and conceals the children's whereabouts, detaining the children indefinitely in an American gulag.
Finally, it ignores every entreaty for opening its processes to the public eye, making its workings transparent and accountable to the citizenry; it infiltrates and controls all major media organizations, threatening to take over the Internet.
With every offense, people of liberty have sought to stay the hand of state aggression... by letters, by voting, by petitioning, by protesting, by reasoning, by publicizing. To no avail. The government—erected by the Oligarchy through show-sham elections of a singleminded, highly compensated two-party body of Ollie lackeys, while burying any real political competition in paperwork—does not represent the people. It is a tyrant. It is a monster. It is unfit for further existence.
Accordingly, we the people intend and declare the following:
Every law and edict that authorizes the initiation of force (aggression) by the US government—via assault, prohibition, compulsion, or privilege—is null and void; it has no moral or legal justification. We will prudentially disobey such laws, until with sufficient organized and publicized disobedience, they will cease application.
Any US government official that cooperates in legal aggression upon American citizens—via enactment or enforcement of assault, prohibition, compulsion, or privilege—is guilty of a Constitutional Violation. The minimum penalty shall be removal from office; the maximum penalty shall be life in prison for treason.
US government financing, as all government activity, will hereafter be voluntarily achieved. No coercion shall be used to extract material wealth from any citizen, except those receiving federal privilege remain contract bound to pay any legislatively approved fees.
Any individual imprisoned by the United States government, or by one of its agent states or corporations, who has committed no act of aggression shall be released immediately. The minimum penalty for failure to do so shall be removal from office; the maximum penalty shall be life in prison for treason.
Humanity has reached a critical point in its development. If we are to avoid destruction we must lay down the tools of expropriation and killing, and embrace the nonaggression principle universally. This means the end of coercive government as we know it, the end of war... and the end of the United States government as an agent of tyranny.
The new system will be implemented as people see fit: an association of purely voluntary communities with no privilege granted to any business entity or other grouping. The sole purpose of government in the new system will be to establish a commonly understood, reasonable legal framework a) for use of resources and rights in property and b) for handling civil disputes and criminal acts of aggression.
In testament of our commitment to a humane civilization based on the nonaggression principle, and to ending the nightmare of its continued wholesale violation by the American state, we pledge our mutual sustenance as a free people.
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So that's my best rough draft effort here toward the end of Memorial Day, 2009. Please visit my blog and let me know where you think I've gone astray or what you think needs to be included. What's different from the days of the original Declaration is the apparent tyrants sit inside the halls of our own governing bodies... they are not some foreign occupying power. At least not obviously.
Truthfully, because I see a higher consciousness developing in humanity, and quickly, I also see a society without coercion as imminent. Having a simple declaration appropriate to the modern political condition and identifying the severe ills we face may prove indispensable to a rapid, successful endgame.
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[1]
laugh out loud.
[2]
in my humble opinion.
[3]
Readers of my columns know I have spent a lot of time wrestling with the naming or otherwise describing the <singular controlling entity>. Oligarchy is a suitable name, but I prefer my home-grown term: the Kleptocons.
[4] An American trillion is a "1" with 12 zeroes following it.
