Defeating The Tyrants

. . .If you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live. You may be thirty-eight years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house. So you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at thirtyeight as you would be at ninety. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice. . . Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this era of bailouts, regulation, clueless leadership, and a bloated government that just kicked the march towards socialism and serfdom into high gear its time we, excuse my French, crap or get off the pot.

Many consider it a sacred duty to protect their children – to create an atmosphere that nurtures them and provides the greatest opportunities for their success and happiness. We take it on faith that the country we leave to them is better than the one we inherited – the freedoms greater, and the endless horizons of hope still present. We take it on faith that we can control this through elections; the fate of this country rests in our hands and our choices. Recent history and a little knowledge of past history quickly dispels one of this myth. Your child’s future is directly entangled to the future of the Republic, so it now becomes your sacred duty to take some time and learn exactly what you can do to ensure liberty and opportunity thrive in a future America. It is no longer enough to be vaguely familiar with concepts such as state’s rights, the 10th Amendment, or state level and jury nullification. It is no longer enough to buy the mythology the current system in any way represents our founder’s original intention. It is no longer enough to know this fact and not understand how and why our deviation from constitutional governance occurred in the past and continues to do so on our watch. It is not just the past number of years or decades, but the past two centuries that your ancestors, then you, and now your offspring have been marched methodically towards serfdom by abuses from all three branches of the federal government, and mainly through contemptible interpretation of our Constitution by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Do you believe the federal government is the highest power in the land and that everyone from the states all the way down to you are subservient to its whims and abuses of power? If so, you are wrong and there is no more excuse for believing so. In swallowing this myth of the ages you are complicit in your own enslavement, that of your fellow men and women, your family and those who would inherit this Republic. Our Founders took it upon themselves to embrace a duty to fight and die for liberty. Many generations since grabbed this mantle in one form or another and often paid the ultimate price to protect these freedoms. Your duty? Take a little time out of your day and do a little reading. Educate yourself on why we find ourselves in our current predicament, and what effective strategies exist to right the listing ship. Understand what works and and then do it.

The efficacy of “storming the castle gates” of Washington by yelling, faxing, and emailing your federal Senators and Representatives, or gathering 2 million strong on the DC mall is demonstrably ineffective – we still have ObamaCare and now this latest Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act. Some of you tried that, are still trying that, and it is not working because you are aiming at the wrong target. This is a very hard critique to hear. As a member of the Tea Party, I found it offensive at first. Then I recalled one of the first rules of military and business campaigns. If you don’t adapt to the facts on the ground, you are going to lose. Regardless of how big we win in November, we must be constantly reminded that government never shrinks. It did not do it under Reagan, and it will not do it under any herd of leaders in DC. It’s either the slow march or the quick run to socialism. There is no running away from bloated government until you remove its fuel – the blind allegiance to a false meme that federal government is supreme over the people. The Founders never said that and the Constitution does not say that. Look for it. You won’t find it.

The answer to just say no to DC. This is done through the process of nullification – successfully used in the past and recently used against the REAL ID Act and Medicinal Marijuana. It’s based on Constitutional principles as was used by great men such as Jefferson and Madison against the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, later known as the Principles of ’98. Near the end of the first decade of the 1800s, some of the very same states that disagreed with Jefferson and Madison used the principles of ’98 during the Embargo of 1807–1809. All of these details can be found in Thomas E. Woods book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. His defense of the efficacy of nullification and his thorough thumping of the Statist appeal to the Commerce Clause, the General Welfare Clause, and the Supremacy Clause is worth the price alone – and that’s just in the first two chapters.

Nullification is the only way to neuter the power of Washington DC and bring us back to constitutional governance and steer the Republic away from tyranny. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth saving ever is. It is an implicit idiom that anything worthy of pursuing involves risk – and the greater the risk, the greater the benefit. If your strategy involves little or no risk, then rest assured your results will fall far short of your expectations. If your opponent believes you are risk averse, then the hammer they pound you on the head with is provided willfully by you. From the above statement it is clear Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this principle very well. We would be wise to adopt the same attitude if there is to be any hope of saving this great country from the stranglehold of tyranny emanating from DC.

This is a plea for your time. It is a plea for you to first read three posts that will paint a picture of the dire straits we are in, why time is of the essence, and just how to extricate ourselves from certain ruin. With the upcoming threat of using a lame duck session of Congress after the 2010 elections, when the people of this country have no recourse to hold their representatives accountable if they lose in the midterms, the Democrats plan on rushing through Cap-and-Trade. It does not stop there.

The following three articles will, I believe, make the difference between winning and losing the battle against fiscal insanity and saving the Republic. It is dependent upon how you to chose to react to them. I ask only that you read them and that you pass them on to your friends and family. The posts are long and that cannot be avoided. Taking the time to read them and to act upon them can make all the difference in the world. I ask only for your diligence. Do with it what you will. I hope and pray you see what is coming and come to know how nullification can save us from this madness. If you need any motivation, the first story links to a Bloomberg report that the IMF predicts our debt to exceed our GDP in 2012, just a few short years away. This is like Greece, except nobody will be there to bail us out. We are, quite literally, that close to fiscal ruin. The actions we take must be swift and decisive:

• Wanna Get Away? The 81% Tax Increase
• Nullification – The Only Way Forward
• Nullification – The Book

Below are additional links to posts and articles from various sources around the internet. As knowledge is the enemy of tyranny when turned into action, the choices made reflect topics ranging from the political culture in DC, recommended books, and a strong emphasis on state’s rights, the 10th amendment, and the nullification movement. We must be not just watchers of liberty, but men and women of effective action. To that end, the organization the Tenth Amendment Center stands out as the one of the best grassroots efforts to execute a strategy of nullification. Become a member and ask your local Tea Party organization to align itself with the goal of nullification and then take the appropriate steps to execute that strategy. Above all remember this: the size of the federal government is forever growing. Even Ronald Reagan could only slow the growth – but he could not reverse it. There is a name for this hand that chokes the life out of liberty. It is called Statism. I call it the beast – a strong central power where a few elites exert their will and lord over the many. And the beast grows; it always grows. This is a truism that leads one definitively to a singular conclusion:

Any attempt to take back power that targets the federal government while leaving Statism intact is doomed to failure and is useless as a long-term strategy.

There is no historical reference point to refute this fact. Government always grows – under both parties. The difference is only of degree and not kind. The country walks in one case and runs in the other towards the mediocrity of socialism that Europe if now finding unsustainable. As many European countries attempt in vain to turn their citizens from sheep that suckle the government teat into independent, empowered, and free individuals, our leaders march us towards that same fate.

Keep the following in mind at all times: The federal government is not all-powerful as they would have you believe. This is a meme – and a wrong one at that – that is so excepted and indelible in our national consciousness that very few think to even question it. This suits those in power just fine and they are all to willing to continue to propagate the lie of federal supremacy and hope to God you never find out differently.

It is time we pulled back the veil and begin to understand our rightful place in the power structure. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground“. In his wisdom, he also recognized the source of the problem by stating, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent“. He also recognized that an informed citizenry is less likely to fall prey to budding tyrants, and that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” and that “the strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government“.

Sounds pretty dire. But long before that last resort is reached, there are options open to us that steer away from a path of violence. We have at our disposal tools used by great men such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. Tools used by abolitionists and great leaders throughout our country’s history. Massive non-violent passive-aggressive civil disobedience, nullification, and jury nullification are powerful weapons indeed. With these tools in our arsenal and a little indulgence from the reader, one could envision but a small adjustment to the words of Thomas Jefferson:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the deeds of patriots and the purging of tyrants.

That through the actions of our minds and unrelenting will, the master’s fear of those they lead into servitude drives them away in fear at the magnitude of the beast they awake.

One of Jefferson’s most prescient predictions deals with the nanny state; the belief that government must exert a great deal of control over the individual. He predicated the future happiness of Americans on the prevention of the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. We now stand on that precipice and just as a pencil cannot stand on its tip, there will be movement in one way or another. How that movement occurs is up to us.

The gauntlet sits at our feet, thrown down by arrogant, delusional, self-interested and disconnected children who wear ties and play at being adults. It’s time we pick it up. It’s time the real adults take charge. Next time you find yourself watching America’s Got Talent, or indulging in some other diversion, take a moment and picture that gauntlet sitting there before you. Behind it, picture the sneering arrogant faces of Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and spineless RINOs pointing and laughing at your self-induced impotence aided by these diversions designed to keep your mind off the target and lull you into a deep sleep. Those who make up our federal government are nothing if not experts at running about the country stirring up apathy. They don’t want you to read and learn. They especially don’t want you to desire to understand and educate yourself. They know the day many of us figure out it is we who are in control and there are constitutional means to exercise that control, then that is the day they have lost.

You can continue to let them laugh at you, or take action to wipe that arrogant sneer off their faces. Take back your country, or hand the keys to your life away to a group of people who, quite frankly, don’t give a damn about you despite all their disingenuous articulations made only for the benefit of the lie they must continue to propagate. The lie you must continue to believe. The lie that will destroy us all. The lie that you are a powerless speck of dust in a whirling sea of mighty forces beyond your control.

The Constitution is clear – you are that powerful force. In this Alice through the looking glass world we now find ourselves in, everything is turned around. Up in now down, left is right, and your power is now their power. Like the Cheshire cat, the politicians are replaced and disappear leaving behind – not their smiles – but their sneers. Sneers adopted up by the next despot in line: ad infinium and ad nauseam.

Ready to take up that gauntlet?

• Resist DC: A Step-by-Step Plan for Freedom – Part 1
• Resist DC: Step by Step Plan for Freedom – Part II
• Who Lost Healthcare?. With a long and distinguished resume that includes former policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan, Dr. Larry Hunter informs us on how the DC political culture really works, setting the stage for the realization that we should not look to DC for our salvation, but to ourselves.
• The 10th Amendment Movement. More from the TAC on current nullification resolutions and bills targeting various issues. Note that state’s rights is a liberal and a conservative issue.
• The Untold History of Nullification: Resisting Slavery. Something the liberals don’t want you to know.
• Who’s Supreme? The Supremacy Clause Smackdown. The Supreme Court’s actual power under the constitution.
• Nullifying Federal Tyranny. Clyde Wilson writes a nice little piece on nullification for the TAC.
• To Our State Legislators: Nullification Requires Protection of Citizens. The role of your state government in protecting your rights: “To effectively nullify, citizens will have to be convinced that civil disobedience against Unconstitutional laws will be fully-protected. Without widespread civil disobedience, nullification might go nowhere“.
• The Courage To Resist. Nullification will take guts by state governments and its citizens, however nothing worth having comes easy. Just remember Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi and what they accomplished. Keep your eye on the prize and always remember that you are on the side of right, backed by the constitution, and the prize is liberty itself. As Gandhi once said, “40,000 British troops cannot force 300 million Indians to do what they will not do“.
• What Would Jefferson Do? Nullify Now!
• Myth Busting: the ‘Constitutional Expert’. Anyone can be an expert on the constitution. Don’t let liberal professors tell you it takes a PhD. The only thing that takes a PhD is figuring out ways to obfuscate and twist the meaning of the document itself, defame our founders by re-writing American history, and entering the echo chamber of the progressive propaganda machine. In the end, it only insults our intelligence, because we are smarter than that, smarter than they are, and getting smarter by the day. You are reading the material, right?
• Must read books that need to be on your bookshelf: