Sir:

Reading opinions on Internet sites such as yours is discouraging so I do little of it. There are a great many fine quotes from luminaries of the past such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson but the vast majority of present day commentary is shallow, extreme, sadistic, illogical or just plain silly.

For many years I have spent much of my spare time learning the lessons of the past; the English common law, from which rights as we know them slowly developed; the influence of John Locke and others on our Founding Fathers and how they were moved to erect the most promising edifice in history for gathering freedoms unto the bosom of their rightful owners – for each person his full and unalienable arsenal, and I have read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the writing of other fascists as well.

Today in America fascism has overwhelmed freedom to some degree in most aspects of life. Fascism is firstly a spirit, a foul, corrupt spirit that has its part in every form of tyranny. Without corruption that odious evil cannot grow deep roots.

Unfortunately, every conceivable corruption has been welcomed by some segment of our society and many are now flourishing. At the top of the heap are, of course, the two political parties. They have sold their souls as they violated their oaths of office and betrayed every American.

The recent vast overpricing of fuels could not have been maintained for the time they were without illegal collusion among the fuel suppliers being protected from federal prosecutors by politicians of both parties. The cost of extracting a barrel of crude oil varies across the world from under two dollars to about eight. The markup from the wellhead to the retail outlet, including taxes, was historically about eighty-five cents. Never should regular gas have reached $2.00 in this country. Only a minute amount of fuels trade hands via the New York Mercantile Exchange. High prices there do not reflect the cost to the oil companies. I believe we were defrauded on a vast scale and the fraud happening now is in other guises, partly in the financial industry.

The US Supreme Court paved the way for the state of South Dakota and City Bank to join forces and pioneer the destruction of usury laws which protected the American people from the bottomless greed of many lenders. Today, the average American may be the most victimized by usurers of any money-using society in history. The congress could have curtailed the predators but the two political parties became part of the problem. Because of them the financial problems we now face are immensely worse than they would otherwise have been.

The US Supreme Court has destroyed property rights for all practical purposes. With their assistance state and local politicians can now incumber or take private property, almost at will. That court, with the congress, has usurped the Seventh Amendment – a thing unthinkable just a few years ago.

The litany can go on endlessly but what I wrote above is moving toward a point. America’s descent into the corrupt, immoral morass of the fascist-like tyranny, destroying every good thing that is our rightful heritage, can be reversed.

About eight years ago I worked out a proposal for an Amendment to the US Constitution that would, if implemented, overcome the political-business-judicial corruptions that are destroying us.

My proposal, the Council of Citizens Amendment, is not long but it would be comprehensive in its application. It looks to the remaining fundamental morality and respect for a civil and free society that still lingers at the core of the American consciousness. It relies upon a cross section of the people, well schooled in the advent and advance of freedoms, being a better guardian of Constitutionally guaranteed rights than those in government who have, are, and will continue selling us out for power, fortune and depraved alien philosophies.

A copy of my Amendment proposal follows below. If you conclude it may be an adequate solution and should at least be publicly debated please make copies of it and distribute them as you find convenient.

As a retired blue collar worker I have no podium from which I might publicize my cause. That cause is honorable and I hope I may find other, more able proponents, to claim it as their own.

Justin Ingalls
jji@bayland.net

Council of Citizens Amendment

The power of veto over laws, rules, regulations, judgments and practices executed under the authority of any governmental body in these United States and the authority of recommendation for removal from office of any official shall be vested in a Council of Citizens.

Section 1.

a) Any law, rule, regulation, judgment or practice by any legislature, executive, judiciary or public official ruled to be in violation of the Constitution of the United States by a majority of the members of the Council of Citizens in session will immediately be void and of no effect.

b) All rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States shall automatically be reviewed by the Council of Citizens. No judgment of the Council of Citizens is reviewable by any other body and may be overturned only by subsequent decision of the Council or by Amendment to the US Constitution. All political jurisdictions in the United States of America and its dependencies shall be equally bound by council decisions.

Section 2.

a) The Council of Citizens shall have the power to recommend the removal from public office any person who, in their estimation, attempts to usurp individual rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

b) A Council recommendation for removal will immediately relieve that person – elected, appointed or hired, with no official excepted – of their authority until an election may be held in which the voters may vote to remove or retain such person. A removal vote will permanently disqualify such person from holding public office or employ. The voting will be on a scale (national, state or regional) appropriate to the office.

c) In the event of a vote failing a majority for removal the official under suspension shall immediately be reinstated to his post and shall be immune from a further recommendation for removal for a period of two years.

d) Any person recommended for removal from office will retain all emoluments of his office until such time as he is removed by public vote.

e) If, after the two year immunity an official is again recommended for removal by a majority vote of the Council of Citizens such official shall be forever disqualified from holding public office or employ.

Section 3.

a) Three citizens from each state who have attained the age of twenty-eight years shall be selected by lottery for membership to the Council of Citizens.

b) The period of membership to the Council of Citizens shall be three years. Each person selected by lottery to the Council will have a period of one year before being seated to study the preparatory course for which he will have to pass a test of one hundred questions in the English language with a positive percentage of at least seventy to be eligible. Two re-tests will be allowed each person.

c) The preparatory course shall be in the English language and include selected writings of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and shall provide a history of the American colonial period and of the development of social-political theory as the founders knew it (a specific, non-alterable course will be developed for this purpose).

d) Each person selected by lottery for the Council of Citizens shall receive ten thousand dollars which is to be paid in monthly installments during the year preceding Council membership and is in compensation for time required in study of the Council of Citizens Course.

e) Upon being seated on the Council each member will be compensated in the amount of five-hundred-thousand dollars per year for the three years of membership and which will be paid in monthly installments.

f) Annual adjustment for inflation of compensation for both study and membership periods will be made.

Section 4.

Congress shall have power to promulgate laws for the enforcement of the provisions of this Amendment and for punishing violations of it but the Council of Citizens, by a majority vote, may produce regulations for enforcement which then will make nul and void all other statutes of enforcement.

end

I particularly like
“The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates”

Though there are a lot of honest politicians out there , unfortunately there are just as many crooked ones , they constantly find ways to milk money from the public coffers and line their bank accounts. I constantly see Senators doing investigations ” In aid” of legislation when all they do is grandstanding and hogging airtime for political purposes. It so frustrating to watch them mess up the government that was meant to serve the people , not them.

Dino D.’s last blog post..3 Dumb Ways to Reduce Gas Prices

As for the record, to agree to disagree is a stalemate not a win. We both leave the debate believing our position to be right and the other position to be wrong. Not only was there no win, I don’t even think there was much advance in our thinking for either of us. That’s a real shame.

To Nicky Cheese, Eric Odom, Matt and Guinnevere -

Thanks. It has been good to hear the varied comments and to trade thoughts. I have been on other websites that tote being all about freedom (usually right wing leaning) where my comments have been deleted or censored in some manner because my thoughts did not further their cause. I appreciate that you live up to the freedom you preach.

http://roolin.stumbleupon.com/public/

From Merriam-Webster:

co·er·cion : the act, process, or power of coercing

co·erce Inflected Form(s): co·erced; co·erc·ing
1 : to restrain or dominate by force 2 : to compel to an act or choice 3 : to achieve by force or threat

Coercion does not require the threat of a first strike. It does not require the threat of violence nor aggression. It simply requires at its least a compelling threat. Self-defense is coercion in that it is the act of dominating or restraining an attacker by force (coerce 1). If the simple threat of self-defense works it is also coercion in that it is a threat of force used to compel people to act a certain way (coerce 2 and 3).

Yes, all forms of government use coercion. Government does not have the monopoly on coercion, though. Coercion is a necessary evil of community and socialization. It is also a necessary evil of the free market. If there is no threat to fulfill a contract, most contracts would never be fulfilled (if you need historical precedence to back this up, let me know, I got plenty).

Even the Amish, whose system of government (true Zero Aggression Principle) I adore even if it is impractical on a large scale, use coercion. If a member of the community has invested in the community through assisting his neighbors in building their barns and tending their fields, but the town elders feel they are not acting according to the community guidelines they are shunned. They are cut off from any community assistance. They lose their investment in the system. That is a threat used to make a community member act or think a certain way. Note: the reason I say this is impractical is that this system has not been tested against an aggressive response to see how far the Amish will go to uphold their values. Extreme case scenario (but not outside historical precedence to prove plausibility): a force majority wants to kill Amish community members. The only hope of stopping this force is with the threat of death. Do they escalate or do they hold by their belief that it is morally wrong to kill another under any circumstance and allow the community members to be killed? I hope that scenario is never put to the test. I like the Amish.

Even Anarchy (what I infer is your version of Zero Aggression Principle) relies on coercion to work. The primary problem with Anarchy is that there are no rules of governance nor any formal governmental body to enforce them. Each individual in an Anarchistic state has the right to develop their own code of conduct and be their own judge, jury, and executor in the enforcement of said code. If however, an individual’s code of conduct does not fit with the force majority, the force majority has the ability to coerce individuals to conform through the compelling although non-aggressive threats of cutting off their access to food, utilities, etc. or through the aggressive and very compelling threats of throwing the offender off their own property or killing them without the requirement of due process. This could be done based simply on the force majority not liking the religion a person practices or even is accused of practicing (there is plenty of historical precedence to defend this possibility). Who is there to stop them? There are no rules of governance guaranteeing freedom of religion, speech, press. There is no right to due process. There is no requirement of knowledge of the behavior being considered criminal, no need for evidence, no need for a jury of peers to decide if the punishment is fair, no right to appeal due to a corrupted process. It is Mob Rule. Anarchy is what is over the cliff’s edge of extreme Libertarianism.

Our government was established to hold individual rights above those of the force majority. Unlike most other systems of government, our right to practice our religion of choice, free speech, free press, and assembly is contractually guaranteed through our Constitution. Our right to due process is also guaranteed (the abomination of the Patriot Act notwithstanding).

Certainly our government has gone through dark times and I personally believe we are in one now as the fear of aggression escalated and manipulated by our government has given them the power to shred the Constitution a bit. But we can still coerce the government to be better through the threat of our vote, through the threat of free speech and public assembly being used to convince others of the righteousness of our defense, and through the threat of revolt based on our Constitutional rights being taken from us.

What is this time period “before government schools” that you speak of. Public schools were first mandated in Massachusetts in 1647 and the first one to exist was in 1643. At that time most of the population in what was to become the USA was illiterate.

Or do you mean when all states provided a free education, which was by 1870.

98 percent of the US population in 2003 had basic literacy and 84 percent had basic prose literacy. This is far above what our population was before 1870.

The countries that are beating us are ones that put an emphasis on better funding their free, compulsory, public (i.e. government provided) education. So this is a losing argument for privatizing education.

As for not wanting to live within the system our forefathers established, feel free to move away and start your own system of government elsewhere. You are going to have to fight me tooth and nail to overthrow it (and I am one of the people who really pays for this system without much direct return). But to hang out here and say “I don’t like their system so I won’t pay for it” while you reap the benefits of its protection I find appalling. I think our forefathers were rather ingenious in their establishment of this system. I have yet to hear of a plan that preserves the basic human rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness better even if we have spent 200+ years bastardizing their work.

btw, when you do move, let us know where so we can notify the brute squad where the easy mark is.

Shunning is also not coercion. It is freedom of association, which is a very basic human right that is frequently criminalized by today’s “laws”.

Today’s system is not based on “the least common denominator”. If it were, there would not be the law pollution that there is. When you attempt to make a system fit lots of people, you must pare down the rules until there is a least common denominator, not keep adding rules until one cannot live without violating hundreds of them per day (and, yes, that IS the situation we are now in).

The only real “least common denominator” is the Zero Aggression Principle. It is easy to understand and easy to abide by, except by bad people. If you wish to steal, rape, murder, and kidnap, of course you would oppose such a system. It is still easy to see that it is the right thing to do. There are those who may admit it is wrong for individuals to do those things, but OK for government to do those things. I do not believe government should be able to commit acts that would be wrong for me to do. Things my conscience would not permit me to do.