Category: Current Events

When “I Told You So” Ain’t Fun Any More – The End Game of Un-sustainability

The great thing about what is left of the “free” Internet is knowing that you are not alone in one’s own thoughts about the future. I think it can be a curse to be equipped with the ability to see “red flags” when few others do. When I think of the word prophetic, I don’t mean fore-telling as in declaring future events, but forth-telling as in revealing truths.

There are those that have this gift, like Patrick Henry, when he commented about the release of the document called the US Constitution with “I smell a rat”. This among many other “red-flags” he saw in that document came true in the years and decades to come.

The administrator of The Burning Platform wrote today about his (and others like Ron Paul) ability to see what was coming before 2008 and now sees more clearly what is unraveling once more. He also has learned a bit about human nature in this decade since the economy was turned upside-down and the banks were bailed out using taxpayer money.

First, about the sheep:

I will also no longer overestimate the ability of the American populace to see through this charade and come to their senses regarding their unsustainable use of debt to try and maintain an unrealistic lifestyle. Their willful ignorance, created through government education propaganda and social engineering, will not be extinguished until the inevitable financial collapse wipes them out again.

Second, about the wolves:

I suppose I continue to underestimate the level of maliciousness, gluttony, and pure arrogance of those pulling the strings behind the curtain, as they rape and pillage the dwindling financial resources of our empire in its death throes. These psychopaths in suits care not for this country or its people. These globalist pricks want nothing more than pliable slaves, distracted by their iGadgets, sports, and Hollywood drivel.

Lastly, about President Donald Trump:

Vintage 2016:

“They’re keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn’t go down. We have a very false economy. At some point the rates are going to have to change. The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market. The U.S. economy is in a big, fat, ugly bubble. I will get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt over a period of eight years. I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on.” – Donald Trump, September 2016.

Vintage 2019:

“The U.S. economy would grow more quickly if monetary policy were eased. If we had a Fed that would lower interest rates, we would be like a rocket ship. We don’t have a Fed that knows what they’re doing. Our most difficult problem is not our competitors, it is the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates too soon, too often, and doesn’t have a clue!” – Donald Trump, July 2019

Obama did that too! The candidate sounded credible .. but once in office, one would think that someone has their kojones in a vise.

I certainly overestimated the campaign rhetoric truthfulness of Donald Trump as he railed against the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low, creating a stock market bubble, and contributing to the parabolic rise in debt. His promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years was impossible, but I thought he might rein in spending and reduce annual deficits.

It seems men who may have the best intentions to do what is right on behalf of the American people when they seek higher office or are appointed to positions of power, such as the Federal Reserve, are summoned into a dark boardroom and informed who are the real bosses and what truly makes the world go round.

Sick but true. As FDR said:

The only reason they are selected is because they WILL do the bidding of those that bought, I mean brought, the puppet, I mean candidate to office.

So where does that have us in the 4Q of 2019?:

So here we are, entering Trump’s fourth year in office as the Deep State and their cronies in Congress, the CIA, and fake news media use impeachment as their last straw in their ongoing attempted coup, and the national debt is up by $3 trillion since Trump took office. At the end of his first term the national debt will exceed $24 trillion and interest on that debt will approach $600 billion.

Is this a good direction? Is this Trumps 4D chess? Using Kevin’s voice from the movie “Home Alone” I say: “I don’t think so”

The tax cuts for corporate America and the richest individuals reduced tax revenues and resulted in corporations buying back billions of their own stock to drive the stock market to the highest valuations since the 2000 dot.com bubble. Meanwhile, Trump fed the military industrial complex with billions more, while funding war throughout the world. Rhetoric about ending wars is just bullshit for the masses. The entitlement outlays remain on an unsustainable path, as Trump and all the feckless politicians in D.C. pretend all is well. Nothing bad has happened – Yet.

I am sure during the Democrat/CIA attempted coup that Trump did not want to pull back DOD spending, especially since a large number of his backers are pro-military, no matter what other country’s women and children will be droned.

The Fed balance sheet peaked at $4.5 trillion as they increased interest rates by a mere 200 basis points over a few years, still 200 basis points below what used to be considered normal. We’ve heard the boasts about the “best economy ever”, “lowest unemployment in history”, “stock market highest ever”, and “record corporate profits”, but with interest rates still at emergency levels and the Fed balance sheet a mere $750 billion lower than its peak, somehow the Fed feels compelled to cut rates and restart QE – but not calling it QE. Powell is bowing down to his Wall Street masters and Trump by taking actions which would only be taken during a recession or financial crisis.

Nothing to see here. Either they will fake it until 2020 elections or the wheels will come off the months prior.

GDP has averaged 2.5% in 2019, with consumer confidence high, consumer spending solid, unemployment at all-time lows, the stock market within spitting distance of all-time highs, and corporate profits at all-time peaks. Why would the Fed cut rates by 50 basis points, with more coming, and increase their balance sheet by $180 billion in one month, with a commitment to increase it by $60 billion a month for the foreseeable future? Will these actions benefit the average person or the above average bank and corporate executives? Savers are again being sacrificed on the altar of corporate America.

Yes, this is the reward people who have tried to save all their lives so they will not be a burden to their kids or to society get when the central bank allows a government to mortgage the future taxpayers lives as perpetual slaves.

Until then, other than Climate Change causing the end of the world in 2032, we have a few things to beware of:

  • His [Trump’s] impeachment and/or election of a gun grabbing socialist will surely lead to civil violence.
  • The continued provocations between superpowers with nuclear weapons and a Middle East always on the verge of apocalypse only needs an arrogant misstep by an egomaniacal leader to trigger a global conflagration.

Stay tuned. Glad I am not the only one that sees these “red-flags”. Now there are at least two, or three or more if you count Captain1776 and Malibu, two of my sons, .. or maybe more if you count my other two sons and my daughter.

You may not know it today, but in the days to come, you might have to lean on your faith (if that is what you have/want/need), that there is a hope for a better future at some point. The founders talked a bit about Providence in their trying times.

Here is to a new generation that can take to heart that after the storm, there will be peace and prosperity.

-SF1

12OCT2019: Blog Post Trilogy Finale – Sedition Criminalization Back in Vogue

10 years after the Constitution was drafted, this act was signed by “patriot” John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

Just from my history education from the government, I know there were times in our history that one had to just agree with the government and not speak or write critically of their actions. Words like treason and sedition became mainstream.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. – John F. Kennedy

From the “Copperheads” during the Civil War (those who called out the tyrant Lincoln) to those critical of entering the “Great War” (WWI), who had to content with Woodrow Wilson’s  U.S. Sedition Act of 1918, the act that made it a crime to ”willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.” Less than 25 years later aviation hero Charles Lindbergh would be criticized by FDR by not going along with his secret plan to get America involved in yet another world war. (WWII) From George Bush stating “you are either with us or against us” in his decision to invade Iraq to the same treatment when Barack Obama decided to attack Libya and back ISIS in Syria, it is the same song, different verse ad nauseum.

This is my 3rd post today, a trilogy of sorts, which:

  1. covered the unhealthy big-business/government alliance and its impact on regions of this nation.
  2. covered on a macro scale how there were two visions of the American Colonies “cause” for independence from the British Empire.
  3. covered on a micro scale, where what one individual says or writes is held against them as a crime against the government.

Pure Redcoat.

Pure Soviet Union circa 1950s/1960s.

It turns out, it is also Pure America in 1798!

Today, under Trump, this whole critical views of government has again gotten personnel. In the last few years, individuals have been banned from social media or experienced a demonetization of their work online because of their words. The attitude these days aligns with that of John Adams back in 1798 when he signed the Alien and Sedition Act as described by Robert Ringer nearly 10 years ago:

… which made it a crime for anyone to criticize the government ”through writing or any other shape, form, or fashion.”

Specifically, criticizing the president, Congress, the military, or the flag was made illegal. This by a group of men who themselves had escaped bondage only twenty-two years earlier!

It was an audacious move by the Federalist-controlled Congress to silence the Republicans, particularly regarding their support of the French Revolution. It was, of course, in direct violation of the Bill of Rights, which clearly states, in the First Amendment, that ”Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.”

With the 21st century press looking more and more like the 20th century USSR mouthpiece “Pravda”, the only true “press” is the independent blogger, tweeter and friend of liberty that risks being the rebel in social settings both in the workplace/marketplace and in the neighborhood.

Daniel McAdams frames it nicely:

Are we agents of a foreign power for opposing the foreign policy of the US government? This is the way of thinking that dominated communist Europe for decades. The Party was always right, guided as it was by the inevitable and undeniable march of history. Any foreign policy position put forth by The Party was by definition the correct foreign policy. So anyone who disagreed was also by definition incorrect and a “wrecker.” When The Party is by definition correct, any deviationist must be punished and any deviation must be disappeared.

New interpretations by Trump’s Administration indicate that in its “Maximum Pressure” exercise with Iran have changed the rules to criminalize individuals who “associate” with Iranians. Originally intended to mean:

Responding to a query by a potential participant, an OFAC employee explained that ‘transaction’ and ‘dealing in transactions,’ as those terms are used by OFAC, are broadly construed to include not only monetary dealings or exchanges, but also ‘providing any sort of service’ and ‘non-monetary service,’ including giving a presentation at a conference.

So simple truth-telling about the US Empire’s sanctions that ban Iranian import of components to make medicine, there by indirectly causing unknown number of deaths in that nation, could subject one to fines and imprisonment.

We have all kinds of freedom in the USA today because of all the interventions around the world, especially in the Middle East, since 1990, NOT!

Pretty soon, your neighbors will be encouraged to “say something, if you hear something”, or maybe not, since your smartphone can report your words 24/7.

Sorry to end on a note like this, but there is a bright side, a silver lining if you will in the empire’s quest to silence us. A weakness.

Pride.

The myth of American Exceptionalism will help to unravel the powerful.

Pride will do 🙂

-SF!

Below: Script from the movie “The Patriot”:

MARTIN
	I've just been inside the mind of a
	genius.  Lord Cornwallis knows more
	about war than I could in a dozen
	lifetimes.

		BILLINGS
	Cheerful news to greet the morn.

		MARTIN
	His victories at Charleston and
	Camden were perfect, strategically,
	tactically, logistically.  But he
	has a weakness.

They all turn to Martin.

		MARTIN
	Lord Cornwallis is brilliant.  His
	weakness is that he knows it.

		GABRIEL
	Father?

		MARTIN
	Pride is his weakness.

The men consider that.

		DELANCEY
	Personally, I'd would prefer
	stupidity.

		MARTIN
	Pride will do.

Long Term Effects of Hamiltonianism: St. George Tucker’s Antidote – Jeffersonianism

The pendulum swing of politics has revealed much as to the gullibility of the masses who are swept up by emotion but rarely have principles by which to live by when the going gets tough.

It seems that Thomas Paine’s writings in 1776 helped put people in a position to better understand the battles, the war and the cause for which thirteen British colonies aligned with each other, for a moment in time, to repel the British Empire from their midst. By the end of this conflict, there were many who were disillusioned with the cause, either by British tactics used by Patriot forces or even having their property pillaged by the Whig faction that made them choose to be a Tory. The pendulum swung in villages, colonies as well as on this continent as people heard the news, fake or not.

At the end of the day, one wonders if those with power can be trusted to make decisions on their behalf, which is at its root, representative government. We have seen ourselves where HOAs and churches can become hotbeds of contention and power moves that can swiftly cripple the week and the meek. I believe this is why many founding fathers, but definitely not all, preferred the grass roots approach. Keeping the “representative” local, so someone could have the proximity to put a boot up their a** if need be, is essential for accountability.

As the War for Independence concluded, and the Articles of Confederation gave way to the Constitution that was created in Philadelphia in 1787, in secret, many “grassroot” promoters found themselves in the minority.

A recent article about St. George Tucker helps shed light not only on the two types of dreams for America that the “cause” help birth, but also the prophetical vision that this man had for seeing the end of the line for either of these visions. Allen Mendenhall’s article “St. George Tucker’s Jeffersonian Constitution” helps to frame my thoughts on what we gained, and what we lost, after the fight for independence from 1775-1783:

One could argue that there are two basic visions for America: the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian. The former is nationalist, calling for centralized power and an industrial, mercantilist society characterized by banking, commercialism, and a robust military. Its early leaders had monarchical tendencies. The latter vision involves a slower, more leisurely and agrarian society, political decentralization, popular sovereignty, and local republicanism. Think farmers over factories.

Both were birthed in the message of liberty. Both indicated the support of the common person in their leadership to create something new here in America that was different from the ways of the Old World, especially in Europe. You can see the thread by who you might consider our heroes:

Hamiltonian:

  • John Adams, John Marshall, Noah Webster, Henry Clay, Joseph Story, and Abraham Lincoln

Jeffersonian:

  • George Mason and Patrick Henry (who, because they were born before Jefferson, could be considered his precursors), the mature (rather than the youthful) James Madison, and then John Taylor of Caroline, John C. Calhoun, Abel Upshur, and Robert Y. Hayne.

So the Federalists (who were not really federalists, but as you know with political parties, their name does not always reveal their core) surged into power on the tails of the Constitution that helped assure a more powerful centralized general government but then over played their hand especially during “Alien and Sedition Act” John Adams administration. The Anti-Federalists, called the Democratic-Republican Party (or simply the Republican party) by the time Thomas Jefferson sought the presidency would sweep into office and would change the political landscape some for the next 30 years or so before the Whigs would emerge and eventually the Republican party that nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

From St. George Tucker’s time, he could see the years and the decades unfolding in his mind. Here are a few of his thoughts:

Under this [Compact Theory of the US Constitution] model, each sovereign, independent state is contractually and consensually committed to confederacy, and the federal government possesses only limited and delegated powers—e.g., “to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations.”

That is indeed one way to interpret the US Constitution, as even Alexander Hamilton would talk this way about it, until it passed and until he was in power with George Washington.

.. summarizing competing contentions about the Sedition Act, Tucker subtly supported the position that “the United States as a federal government have no common law” and that “the common law of one state . . . is not the common law of another.” The common law, in Tucker’s paradigm, is bottom-up and home-grown; it’s not a formula that can be lifted from one jurisdiction and placed down anywhere else with similar results and effects.

This is another core principle that IF had been understood by the political elite of the 20th/21st century, it would not have thought that the USA could bring “democracy” to any other nation in the world.  Even in the United States, the STATES represent different cultures, morals and standards. We would have done well in keeping it that way, but our ancestors believed Hamilton and Lincoln over Jefferson and Calhoun.

Allen ends his article with the wisdom that can be gained in understanding what we lost after the War for Independence:

Reading Tucker reminds us that for most of our country’s formative history the principal jurisprudential debates were not about natural law versus positivism, or originalism versus living constitutionalism, but about state versus federal authority, local versus national jurisdiction, the proper scale and scope of government, checks and balances, and so forth. To the extent these subjects have diminished in importance, Hamilton has prevailed over Jefferson. Reading Tucker today can help us see the costs of that victory.

It seems that only the recovery of the wisdom and the thoughts of these 18th century thinkers can lead this land towards a better day for us, our kids and our grand-kids. The US Empire’s current trajectory is self-defeating in the long term and not sustainable.

Local city-state and region-state philosophy is a much needed idea, but the powers residing in the political elites funded by an evil moneyed elites will not give up their multi-century grasp for total control and power easily.

Something will have to give.

-SF1

Political + Business Monopolies = Mismanagement Squared: California & PG&E Blackout

Fuel treatments demonstrably protect the tracts on which they are performed. This image shows how treatment protected the previously thinned acres when the Northern California Goat Fire of 2000 swept through. In addition to protecting the treated acres themselves, it is believed that strategically located thinnings can stall the overall spread of wildfires, thus protecting acres beyond those treated.

What is extremely sad is the fact that it usually takes years to see the dysfunction, many time unseen at first, that comes from decisions made by those that have little to no skin in the game. In this case, political decisions in the 1990s, some good intentions, could result in unintended consequences in 2018 and beyond. Business joined at the hip with government is a recipe for disaster. Pure Crap-italism brought California this below instead!

In the recent ‘Watts Up With That’ article on the intentional PG&E blackout for a million or more California residents away from the metro areas to prevent wild fires, Anthony Watts rightly lays blame where it needs to be laid:

To better understand how we came to this forced blackout, it is useful to look to the past. When the gold rush led to modern California, early photographers chronicled the landscape .. the wildlife biologist depicted a California countryside of grassland with isolated stands of pines and oaks. The native Americans in the region frequently used fire to shape the landscape to increase the food available for them, as not a lot of sustenance grows on a dense forest floor.

Watts outlines the natural and then outlines what the last 150 years has brought California:

But with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Americans came a thriving economy and the order of government. Trees were useful and valuable, and therefore harvested. Fire was a threat to towns and cities, and thus, suppressed.

For decades, up until the 1970s, California would harvest and replant about as much wood as could be grown through an abundance of sunshine, snow, and rain. But in the 1990s, concern over logging’s effect on the spotted owl (largely misplaced, as time would tell) led to a massive slowdown in the timber harvest, especially on the federal lands that make up about 60 percent of California’s forests.

With a decline in the harvest came a decline in the allied efforts to clear brush, build and maintain access roads and firebreaks. This led inexorably to a decades’ long build-up in the fuel load. Federal funds set aside for increasingly unpopular forest management efforts were instead shifted to fire-suppression expenses.

It must be noted, that the usual suspects have not been mentioned. This is because it has been the “answer” for every question since “experts” predicted Global Cooling in the 1970s and Global Warming in the 1990s who now fly the flag Climate Change as their mantra. Fact is, California is not hotter and drier due to man-made environmental impact, but annual precipitation totals over the past 100 years show no statistically meaningful trend.

In a stroke of some innovative thinking, there was a 2006 report by the Western Governors Association that promoted the use of technological advances to adjust for the overreaction to environmental concerns. The report noted that:

“over time the fire-prone forests that were not thinned, burn in uncharacteristically destructive wildfires… …In the long term, leaving forests overgrown and prone to unnaturally destructive wildfires means there will be significantly less biomass on the ground, and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Their solution was to construct Biomass facilities which can provide power in the kilowatt range to farms and light industry or in the multi-megawatt
range to communities, campuses and industrial complexes. These qualities alone make biomass the most diverse, complex and strategic renewable resource in the region.

Of course, innovative thinking rarely impacts those who are content with the status quo, and so now over a decade later, when the rubber meets the road, and crisis emerges, politicians look to shift the blame:

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, supports the blackout as a preventive measure, noting that the planned power cut “shows that PG&E finally woke up to their responsibility to keep people safe.”

Ironically, it was former Gov. Jerry Brown that changed his tune in recent years as it became apparent that environmental protection turned out to be a worse Rx for the environment (kind of like the typical political wars where their prescription is worse than the “disease”, like The War on Drugs, The War on Poverty, The War on Terror, etc):

California politicians, late to realize the true nature of the wildfire danger, have finally started to play catch-up. Last year, outgoing four-term Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown reversed his longtime reluctance to active forest management when he signed two bills into law, both of which passed on the last day of the legislative session in what was to become California’s deadliest wildfire year.

SB 901 allocated $190 million a year to use prescribed burns to reduce the fuel load while improving forest health, while SB 1260 made three important policy changes to streamline the ability to conduct prescribed and controlled burns; remove air quality impediments to preventive burns; and prevent environmental quality lawsuits from slowing or stopping needed burns.

So it looks like big business married to big government has once again brought about a worse scenario than if they had been kept out of the monopolization of power (no pun intended) for those in Northern California that have escaped the urban areas. Just think what smaller utilities companies in competition along with county governments could have done for those in these areas verses what bureaucrats did in Sacramento! Instead, look at what politicians have done:

In all likelihood, these measures will prove to be too little, too late for rural Californians, many of whom flocked to build along what is known as the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) where land was cheaper and housing costs far less than in California’s dense and heavily regulated urban centers.

The environmentalists who hold sway over much of the California political class chafe at these homes along the edge of the forest and chaparral, calling for development restrictions and special fire taxes to discourage low-cost housing in rural areas and around the suburban periphery.

And now, as the result of forest mismanagement by both the federal government and California, many homeowners living out in the WUI can no longer obtain fire insurance. No fire insurance, no mortgage. No mortgage, no house. Today, it would also appear, no electricity as well.

Like many other states, you have the urban areas that hold most of the decision-making power and then you have the rural areas that are at the mercy of big-money men hundreds of miles away.

It was not meant to be this way, for in my sequel to this post, I will explain that one of the two versions of America saw things very differently. The root of where we (as well as the rural Californians) are today is from decisions made in the late 1700s right on up to the 1860s and beyond. Once again, democracy renders a nation hostage to the majority and powerful and marginalizes those who live and act differently. Democracy is the road one takes when on the way to Socialism, Marxism and Communism.

Stay tuned.

-SF1

17SEP1787 – Coup d’etat in Philadelphia: US Constitution

Anyone who attended public school in the last 100 years have been taught that the US Constitution was one of the milestones in this country’s birth and maturation process towards being and becoming the land of the free.

This is rubbish. Americans were more free in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris than they were after the US Constitution was revealed on 17SEP1787 and finally ratified by 11 of the 13 former colonies two years later in 1789.

For those that would like to dig into the details rather than be persuaded by a single blog post I would recommend Sheldon Richman’s book ‘America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited‘:

This book challenges the assumption that the Constitution was a landmark in the struggle for liberty. Instead, Sheldon Richman argues, it was the product of a counter-revolution, a setback for the radicalism represented by America’s break with the British empire. Drawing on careful, credible historical scholarship and contemporary political analysis, Richman suggests that this counter-revolution was the work of conservatives who sought a nation of “power, consequence, and grandeur.” America’s Counter-Revolution makes a persuasive case that the Constitution was a victory not for liberty but for the agendas and interests of a militaristic, aristocratic, privilege-seeking ruling class.

Personally, way back in MAR1976 when I was a high school senior and 17 years old, I made the oath below:

“I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

Enlisting in the US Navy, I had little to no idea as to the words I was repeating. At that time I was not aware how defective the Constitution was, the way it was created (the charge in 1787 was to amend the Articles of Confederation, not to replace it) and the way it has been abused.

Note that my first charge in this oath I took is to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. So what if the President of the US is that enemy, how can I still “obey the orders of the President of the United States”?

Looking back in history, I see that many if not all the presidents have subverted the US Constitution either in the letter or spirit of that defective document. LBJ, FDR, Wilson, Lincoln and even Washington all said that some existing crises necessitated their decisions and actions. So what good is this document (as Lysander Spooner said)?

The answer is “Absolutely Nothing!” This document does nothing to restrain tyranny in these united States as it was originally intended, by some of its authors.

But I digress, for a better question is why was this document needed? Why were the Articles of Confederation just tossed aside? Why was this document drafted in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia behind closed doors in tremendous secrecy?

The truth is, if word leaked out of the actual contents, the original intent and the agenda that was behind this major shift, the revolution that had just concluded would have been set ablaze again. The authors of this document were in a race against time and did everything in their power to ensure that the adoption took place as quickly as possible to avoid reflection and contemplation in the public square that would kill the proposal once the consequences of its agenda became apparent.

They were actually insisting that the states ratify first and then propose amendments later. The document had no bill of rights and it actually gave more power to the general or central government. It was a political coup d’état. No wonder Patrick Henry said he smelled a rat.

It was nothing less than an oligarchical coup to ensure that the moneyed interests, bankers and aristocrats could cement their positions and mimic the United Kingdom from which they had been recently divorced.

In the interests of truth, the document that should be taught before the US Constitution is in fact the Articles of Confederation that was conceived in 1776 and adopted in 1781. As William Buppert explains:

As Austrian economists have discovered, bigger is not necessarily better. The brilliant and oft-dismissed Articles of Confederation (AoC) and Perpetual Union are a testament to voluntarism and cooperation through persuasion that the Constitution disposed of with its adoption. Penned in 1776 and ratified in 1781, the spirit and context of the Articles live on in the Swiss canton system and are everywhere evident in the marketplace where confederationist sentiments are practiced daily. The confederation’s design divines its mechanism from what an unfettered market does every day: voluntary cooperation, spontaneous information signals and the parts always being smarter than the sum A. confederation according to the Webster’s 1828 dictionary is:

  1. The act of confederating; a league; a compact for mutual support; alliance; particularly of princes, nations or states.

This ‘marriage’ retains the freedom of the entities that would voluntary join to also exit. What is obvious is that the US Constitution did not guarantee this exit clause, otherwise the state constitutions of New York and Virginia would not have had exit rights penned into their own documents. Furthermore, when the Constitutional Convention convened in 1787, 55 delegates came but 14 later quit as the Convention eventually abused its mandate and scrapped the Articles of Confederation instead of revising it.

Ultimately, actions spoke louder than words when even the much admired Washington was revealed as having none of the talk of independence and wanting a firm hand on the yoke of the states to make them obey their masters on high. Washington’s behavior in the Whiskey Rebellion cast away any doubts of the imperious behavior of the central government a mere four year after the adoption of the Constitution.

There were those who stood in the way, but typical to politics in general, these people are marginalized. Patrick Henry gave the firmest defense of the skeptical posture when he questioned the precarious position the Constitution put to the state’s sovereignty on 5 June 1788 at the Virginia Ratifying Convention. It should be noted that the savvy ‘Founding Lawyers’ ensured that the process of ratification was sped along by bypassing the bicameral house requirements and simply asking the states to conduct ratifying conventions. Henry’s text says:

“How were the Congressional rights defined when the people of America united by a confederacy to defend their liberties and rights against the tyrannical attempts of Great-Britain? The States were not then contented with implied reservation. No, Mr. Chairman. It was expressly declared in our Confederation that every right was retained by the States respectively, which was not given up to the Government of the United States. But there is no such thing here. You therefore by a natural and unavoidable implication, give up your rights to the General Government. Your own example furnishes an argument against it. If you give up these powers, without a Bill of Rights, you will exhibit the most absurd thing to mankind that ever the world saw — A Government that has abandoned all its powers — The powers of direct taxation, the sword, and the purse. You have disposed of them to Congress, without a Bill of Rights — without check, limitation, or controul. And still you have checks and guards — still you keep barriers — pointed where? Pointed against your weakened, prostrated, enervated State Government! You have a Bill of Rights to defend you against the State Government, which is bereaved of all power; and yet you have none against Congress, though in full and exclusive possession of all power! You arm youselves against the weak and defenceless, and expose yourselves naked to the armed and powerful. Is not this a conduct of unexampled absurdity? What barriers have you to oppose to this most strong energetic Government? To that Government you have nothing to oppose. All your defence is given up. This is a real actual defect. . . “

We, in 2019, are feeling the full effects of this constitution’s real purpose with the emergence of the government spying on its citizens and the whole Red Flag law emergence. Total control implies that all guns are in the government’s hands so that “All your defence is given up”

Helpless tax slaves is the aim of the government we have today, thanks in part to the efforts of Madison, Hamilton and John Jay.

It appears that James Madison tried to reverse himself somewhat by introducing ten amendments called the Bill of Rights, but it was too little, too late, and only represented a piece of paper:

“Our constitutions purport to be established by ‘the people,’ and, in theory, ‘all the people’ consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of ‘the people’ exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.”~ Lysander Spooner

-SF1