CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
The Cold War in the United States
Americans Are a Subjugated People
The basic institution of constitutional dictatorship of an executive nature is martial rule.... Martial rule is an emergency device designed for use in the crises of invasion or rebellion. It may be most precisely defined as an extension of military government to the civilian population, the substitution of the will of a military commander for the will of the people's elected government.... [I]t means military dictatorship — government by the army, courts-martial, suspension of civil liberties, and the whole range of dictatorial action of an executive nature....
Martial rule and executive lawmaking are both marked by a correlative technique or characteristic of constitutional dictatorship, the government invasion of political or economic liberties. The crisis expansion of power is generally matched by a crisis contraction of liberty [emphasis in original].(1)
In a very real sense, the non-flagrant war against the American people begun during the Reconstruction period in the mid-1860s and continued in the early 1930s is still being waged today. In light of what has been documented in this book, it should be obvious that efforts to "preserve our rights" via constitutional arguments in the courts, or by electing "the right man" to office, or asserting State sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment, or creating new political parties, are all a futile waste of valuable time and resources. As stated by William Whiting, "While war is raging, many of the rights held sacred by the Constitution — rights which cannot be violated by any acts of Congress — may and must be suspended and held in abeyance,"(2) and "None of these rights, guaranteed to peaceful citizens, by the Constitution belong to them after they have become belligerents against their own government" [emphasis in original].(3) The constitutional protection of property against confiscation "without due process of law"(4) is now non-existent within the United States because "nothing in the Constitution interferes with the belligerent right of confiscation of enemy property,"(5) and "no judicial process is necessary to give the government full title thereto...."(6) According to the laws of war, "the property of persons residing in the enemy's country is deemed, in law, hostile, and subject to condemnation without any evidence as to the opinions or predilections of the owner"(7) and "the title to such real property remains in abeyance during military occupation, and until the conquest is made complete."(8) In the words of William Birkhimer, "The government of military occupation has complete control of lands and immovable property of the enemy in the occupied district. The fruits, rents, and profits issuing therefrom are therefore under the control of that government, whose officials may lawfully claim and receive them."(9) Consequently, a report commissioned by the U.S. Senate in 1933 declared, "The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual so-called 'ownership' is only by virtue of Government, i.e. law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law [public policy] and subordinate to the necessities of the State."(10) Furthermore, since "a victorious army appropriates all public money,"(11) the wealth of the people has also been seized and substituted with "legal tender" paper instruments of exchange, known today as Federal Reserve Notes, which completely lack any backing in gold or silver.
The right of the people of the several States to govern themselves has been superceded by a perpetual state of declared national emergency which "confers upon the government... the right to seize and hold conquered territory by military forces, and of instituting and maintaining military government over it, thereby suspending in part, or in whole, the ordinary civil administration,"(12) the functions of which "cease under martial law, or continue only with the sanction, or, if deemed necessary, the participation of the occupier or invader."(13) The presence of "a military commander in a district which is the theatre of war" is a public notice to the effect that "the laws of war apply to that district," and "by the laws of war, an invaded country has all its laws and municipal institutions swept by the board, and martial law takes the place of them."(14) To put it simply, the republican form of government guaranteed to the several States by Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution is denied to them under the laws of conquest. According to the Supreme Court in Dooley v. U.S., "We therefore do not look to the constitution or political institutions of the conqueror for authority to establish a government for the territory of the enemy in his possession, during its military occupation, nor for the rules by which the powers of such government are regulated and limited. Such authority and such rules are derived directly from the laws of war."(15)
Because "martial law affects chiefly the police and collection of public revenue and taxes,"(16) the various "law enforcement" agencies within the States, Counties, and Cities serve to "police" military districts, insuring that "public policy" is obeyed by all within their respective jurisdictions, and collecting reparations from offenders.(17) That public policy is not really law at all is seen in the following definition: "Public policy is a variable quantity; it must and does vary with the habits, capacities, and opportunities of the public."(18) When the public capacity is that of subjugation to an occupying military force, public policy can only be interpreted as the exercise of an unlimited police power against a conquered people. As pointed out by F. Harold Essert in 1933:
The police power of the state has been called the "dark continent" of American constitutional law, and rightly so, for this section of the law is the most vague and difficult to define of all over the courts have labored. To attempt to convey a true concept of its nature and its limitations involves many problems.... The power is, and must be from its nature, incapable of any very exact definition or limitation, for it is that function of government which has for its direct and primary purpose the promotion of public welfare through the means of compulsion and restraint over private rights. Who shall say what constitutes the public welfare? Who shall say where the limits of compulsion and restraint should end? As each tomorrow shall offer different social, political, and economic conditions, so there shall be a totally different interpretation of the police power for each circumstance....(19)
The chilling reality of Essert's description of an unlimited Executive police power is seen in the Ninety-Third Congress' admission that such power "originates in the individual will of the President and represents an exercise of authority without law. No one, perhaps not even the President, knows the limits of the power he may seek to exert in this instance and the parties affected cannot learn the limit of their rights."(20) Furthermore, "no person [Executive agent] shall be held liable in any court for or in respect to anything done or omitted in good faith in connection with the administration of, or in pursuance of" the declared state of national emergency.(21) Those found within the venue of the Fourteenth Amendment and who are thus "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States," have nothing at all with which to shield themselves from "an enormous — seemingly expanding and never-ending — range of emergency powers."(22) Hence, they are taxed in their enjoyment of what would normally be constitutionally protected rights, such as travel, labor, ownership of property, inheritance, marriage, and so forth. It is not a coincidence that the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which became the Internal Revenue Service in 1953, was birthed by the Lincoln Administration in 1862 when the whole country had been placed under martial law. Although the collection of a direct tax from the people of the several States without apportionment is prohibited in the Constitution,(23) no such provision applies to the collection of taxes from those who have either lost their citizenship by conquest or have voluntarily surrendered the same through their own negligence:
Enforced contributions from the enemy are equally authorized whether required during the progress of the war for the sustenance and transportation of the conqueror's army, or after the conclusion thereof, as one of the terms of peace....
Those upon whom contributions are levied during the progress of war are not the armies of the enemy.... They are, as a rule, non-combatants, peaceable citizens, and corporations, all of whom the demands of the times have thrown into financial straits.(24)
Viewed in this light, the so-called Sixteenth Amendment does indeed legally establish the income tax, its dubious "ratification" and the complaints of the "tax protest movement" notwithstanding.(25) In the words of Charles Edward Merriam, "Under this [police] power it is possible to take the most of a man's income, and to do it in a perfectly legal manner."(26)
Licenses are also required for all commercial activity because "all intercourse between the territories occupied by belligerent armies, whether by traffic, by letter, by travel, or in any other way, ceases," except "according to agreement approved by the government, or by the highest military authority [the Commander-in-Chief]."(27) The Government's definition of what constitutes "intercourse" is quite exhaustive:
The question of what is commerce is to be approached both affirmatively and negatively, that is, from the points of view as to what it includes and what it excludes. While commerce includes trade, traffic, the purchase, sale, or exchange of commodities, and the transportation of persons or property, whether on land or water or through the air, according to various definitions of the term, and according to judicial exposition apart from formal definitions, nevertheless commerce is broader than, and is not limited to trade, transportation, or the purchase, sale, or exchange of goods or commodities.
Commerce is more than any one of these things in that it is intercourse. The terms "commerce," "interstate commerce," and "commerce among the states" or "commerce among the several states," embrace business and commercial intercourse in any and all of its forms and branches and all its component parts between citizens of different states, and may embrace purely social intercourse between citizens of different states, as over the telephone, telegraph, or radio, or the mere passage of persons from one state to another for social intercourse and traffic, but also the subject matter thereof, which may be either things, goods, chattels, merchandise, or persons.(28)
Commenting on the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. Senate likewise stated in its Senate Report 113:
The trade or commerce regulated or prohibited is defined in Subsections (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e), page 4. This trade covers almost every imaginable transaction, and is forbidden and made unlawful except when allowed under the form of licenses issued by the Secretary of Commerce (p. 4, sec. 3, line 18). This authorization of trading under licenses constitutes the principal modification of the rule of international law forbidding trade between the citizens of belligerents, for the power to grant such licenses, and therefore exemption from the operation of law, is given by the bill.
To this end, "military commanders under such circumstances [are] sometimes led to assume a licensing authority."(29) To find out for themselves whether or not they are considered to be the enemy by the U.S. Government, Americans need look no further than their own wallets for the evidence.
The Suspension of Lawful Courts
According to the Lieber Code, which was originally promulgated in 1863 under Lincoln's direction as General Orders No. 100, "Whenever feasible, martial law is carried out in cases of individual offenders by military courts.... Military jurisdiction is of two kinds: first, that which is conferred and defined by statute; second, that which is derived from the common law of war.... In the armies of the United States the first is exercised by courts-martial...."(30) In the 1867 case Hefferman v. Porter it was likewise declared:
The right of a military occupant to govern, implies the right to determine in what manner, and through what agency.... The municipal laws of the place may be left in operation, or suspended, and others enforced. The administration of justice, may be left in the hands of the ordinary officers of the law; or these may be suspended, and others appointed in their place. Civil rights and civil remedies may be suspended, and military laws and courts and proceedings, may be substituted for them, or new legal remedies and civil proceedings, may be introduced.(31)
More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court declared:
The jurisdiction of United States courts-martial is limited to serving in the armed forces, certain categories of reserve and retired personnel, prisoners of war... and persons employed by or accompanying the armed forces beyond the continental limits of the United States of America. Nevertheless, where martial law has been declared and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus suspended, any civilian may find himself amenable to trial not before the regular civil courts, but by the order of or under regulations promulgated by a military commander, by one of a miscellany of ad hoc tribunals composed of officers of the armed services and usually designated as provost courts, military commissions, or military boards....(32)
Likewise, the Law of Land Warfare manual states:
...[I]n practice, offenders who are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice but who by the law of war are subject to trial by military tribunals, are tried by military commissions, provost courts, or other forms of military tribunals.
In areas occupied by United States forces, military jurisdiction over individuals, other than members of the Armed Forces, who are charged with violating legislation or orders of the occupant is usually exercised by military government courts. Although sometimes designated by other names, these tribunals are actually military commissions. They sit in and for the occupied area and thus exercise their jurisdiction on a territorial basis.(33)
The gold-fringed military flag which was carried by the Army of the Potomac during its war against the Southern people now stands in American courtrooms as a public proclamation of the military occupation and government of the former States. The spearhead finial is used in the traffic and justice (provost) courts, in which the summary trials proceed upon charges and specifications rather than an indictment. The eagle finial is used in the larger civil courts which are organized under the authority of the President in times of national emergency or when the normal courts of the States are closed.(34) Both of these are courts-martial of the occupying power, not lawful courts of the State. For those tempted to think that the gold fringe is mere decoration, the following quote is provided:
From a military standpoint flags are of two classes, those flown from stationary masts over army posts, and those carried by troops in formation. The former are referred to by the general name flags. The latter are called colors when carried by mounted troops. Colors and standards are... made of silk with a knotted fringe of yellow on three sides.
Use of the flag. The most general and appropriate use of the flag is as a symbol of authority and power.(35)
Elsewhere, we are told that, "within the discretion of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy,"(36) the gold-fringed United States flag is "flown indoors, only in military courtrooms" and "[d]isplay or use of flags, guidons, and streamers or replicas thereof, including those presently or formerly carried by U.S. Army units, by other than the office, individual, or organization for which authorized, is prohibited except [by]... [r]ecognized United States Army division associations...."(37) It is very clear that the display or use of a military flag outside a military venue is strictly prohibited.
It is commonly asserted within the so-called Patriot movement that the gold-fringe indicates admiralty jurisdiction. However, courts which hear cases of admiralty jurisdiction fall within the venue of Article III of the Constitution and are therefore part of the constitutional function of the Judicial Branch of the Government, whereas "Military courts are not Article III courts but agencies established pursuant to Article I."(38) The origin of these courts can be located in the unconstitutional Acts of the Reconstruction period, and as such, they exist solely to enforce the "appropriate legislation" and "military jurisdiction" of those Acts — in other words, the "Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water."(39)
Remedy is Denied to the People
The arbitrary nature of the present-day legal system as the mere collection of war reparations from the conquered enemies of the U.S. Government is further evident from the following: "New administrative undertakings of the war and post-war years introduced the National Government permanently into fresh areas of activity. Among these [was]... in 1870 [during Reconstruction] the creation, under the Attorney-General, of a Department of Justice to supervise from Washington the activities of the United States attorneys in the field."(40) "In the field" is defined as "[a]ny place, on land or water, apart from permanent cantonments or fortifications, where military operations are being conducted."(41) Furthermore, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice Act of 5 May 1950, "The words 'in the field' imply military operations with a view to an enemy..., and it has been said that in view of the technical and common acceptation of the term, the question of whether an armed force is 'in the field' is not to be determined by the activity in which it may be engaged at any particular time...."(42) It is not surprising, therefore, to find that all other administrative workers who are employed or commissioned by the Government to collect reparations from its citizens or otherwise monitor and regulate their activities, such as Internal Revenue, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)(43) agents, are also referred to as "agents in the field."
That this is what is really going on in the courts is kept hidden from the ignorant public by the illusion of jury trials. As noted in a previous chapter, Lincoln had justified the removal of the courts from their constitutional foundation by an appeal to "necessity" and the "public welfare" — both of which he reserved the right to define himself. He even ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for opposing his policies. Consequently, the judge which presides in such courts is seated at the pleasure of the Executive police power and since he is bound only by what is deemed to be beneficial to the public welfare, he may overturn a jury's verdict as he pleases. The old constitutional doctrine of jury nullification cannot co-exist with such an arbitrary system because the jury members no longer take the law with them into the courtroom, but instead have it delivered to them from the mouth of the judge, who decides what it shall be as the necessity of the moment or his own personal discretion dictates.(44) Since panel members must be "U.S. citizens" under the Fourteenth Amendment (themselves "completely subject" to all the codes and regulations arising therefrom) and they are carefully screened to weed out those who may hold political or religious views contrary to the purpose of the court-martial (i.e. those who still believe the Constitution to be "the supreme law of the land" will rarely make it through this screening process to sit on a panel), it is impossible for the accused to be guaranteed a trial by "an impartial jury" as stated in the Sixth Amendment.(45) Consequently, the presence of a jury in a court-martial is nothing more than a formality, for the guiding force there are the "principles of public policy as distinguished from the common law."(46) Elsewhere, we read:
...[T]he courts are selected from among the ranks of men filled with the spirit of the times. We are certain to find the Constitution a growing and expanding instrument. For that very reason it is a living and not a dead Constitution. By suiting itself to different times and circumstances it lives.
So, too, the police power must continue to be elastic — capable of development — as economic, social, and political conditions vary. Therefore the rule of precedent, Stare Decisis, is not a sufficient basis upon which to judge the present-day meaning of this term, nor the extent of its scope.(47)
We must not overlook the above admission: modern American courts have rejected stare decisis, which simply means that they are not bound "to abide by, or adhere to, decided cases."(48) This malady of capriciousness extends even to the Supreme Court, which, as evidenced by Lincoln's utter contempt for the Court of his day and by Roosevelt's "court packing" in the 1930s, has little function under an Executive dictatorship other than "a fairly harmless observer of the emergency activities of the President...."(49) J. Millard of the Washington State supreme court commented:
The Supreme Court of the United States has "rendered it impossible for the practicing lawyer to advise his client as to what the law is today, or even to offer a guess as to what it will be tomorrow...." The court repeatedly has overruled decisions, precedents and landmarks of the law of long standing without assigning any valid reason therefore, dismissing the question with a wave of the hand, and contenting itself with the assertion that these precedents have been eroded by the processes of the years; or basing its decision on casuistry and sophistry rather than by logic.... By this conduct [the court] has subjected itself to the suspicion, widely held, that it speaks, or undertakes to speak, in the voice of the appointing [Executive] power, rather than by the voice of the law.(50)
The American people have been duped into placing their trust in a legal profession which is impotent to even inform them "what the law is today," much less to shield them from the abuses of a government freed from all constitutional restraint. To say that there is no remedy in the courts for a people subjected to military occupation would be an understatement. According to the Manual for Courts Martial, an "act of war" exists "in virtually every act conceivable by any person, against which the United States Government has made a law, rule, or regulation."(51) As we have seen above in the admissions of the Ninety-Third Congress, the codes, rules, and regulations promulgated by Congress under the direction of the President acting as Commander-in-Chief are so voluminous that it is impossible for any "U.S. citizen" to understand, much less to comply with them at all times. Of course, it is not intended for the citizens to do so; indeed, the very existence of the "system" depends upon "criminal activity" to carry on its "war on crime," its "war on drugs," its "war on poverty," its "war on terror," or any other artificial war or national emergency that is concocted by the current Administration to justify the continued derogation of constitutional rights.
According to the laws of war, the military authority in an occupied country has the right "to search by day or night the homes of citizens.... to order the surrender of arms and stores, and to proceed to search and seize them; [and] to prohibit publications and meetings that it judges to be of a nature tending to incite and maintain disorder."(52) The military siege and subsequent summary execution without a trial of over eighty men, women, and children in Waco, Texas in 1993 was a brazen exercise of the President's assumed power under martial law to wage war against belligerent citizens, as are the many other examples of Executive tyranny which have occurred with increasing frequency in our day. It is time that Americans wake up and face the truth that the "land of the free" is a thing of the past, and that the celebration sanctioned by the United States Government each year on the Fourth of July is not the independence of the people, but its own "new birth of freedom" from the "chains" of the Constitution which was won for it by the "father" of the "new nation" — Abraham Lincoln.
The American Republic is Dead
In 1987, Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice, made this admission:
...I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago....
While the Union survived the civil war, the Constitution did not. In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14th Amendment, ensuring protection of the life, liberty, and property of all persons against deprivations without due process, and guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.(53)
Even more revealing is the following statement by George P. Fletcher:
The "original republic" — the one for which our "forefathers" fought "face to face — hand to hand" — exists only in the minds of academics and fundamentalist patriots. The republic created in 1789 is long gone. It died with 600,000 Americans killed in the Civil War. That conflict decided once and forever that the People and the States do not have the power to govern their local lives apart from the nation as a whole. The People have no power either to secede as states or to abolish the national government.
The new Constitution — the one that shapes and guides the national government and disturbs the new patriots to their core — begins to take hold in the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln skips over the original Constitution and reconstitutes it according to the principles of equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence. This short speech functions as the Preamble to a new charter that crystalizes after the war in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The Gettysburg Address signals the beginning of a new Constitution. The language is so familiar that we do not realize the implicit transformation.(54)
It is important to note that Fletcher is not someone who can be easily dismissed as an "anti-government, right-wing extremist," but is a Law Professor at Columbia University and the author of several books and over sixty major articles on criminal law, comparative law, torts, and jurisprudence. It was also not a mere metaphor when Fletcher referred to "the new Constitution" as distinguished from the "original Constitution." As he stated in the article quoted above, "the new Constitution" is founded in the Reconstruction "amendments," which were nothing more than war measures used to establish a "new jurisdiction" — "U.S. citizenship" — which can be regulated and taxed without limitation in order to prop up the debt-ridden Federal behemoth. Back in the early Nineteenth Century, the able and respected jurist William Rawle warned the American people of the dangers of departing from a written and permanent constitution as the security of their rights:
It is not necessary that a constitution should be in writing; but the superior advantages of one reduced to writing over those which rest on traditionary information, or which are to be collected from the acts and proceedings of the government itself, are great and manifest. A dependence on the latter is indeed destructive of one main object of a constitution, which is to check and restrain governors. If the people can only refer to the acts and proceedings of the government to ascertain their own rights, it is obvious, that as every such act may introduce a new principle, there can be no stability in the government. The order of things is inverted; what ought to be the inferior, is placed above that which should be the superior, and the legislature is enabled to alter the constitution at its pleasure.
This is admitted by English jurists to be the case in respect to their own constitution, which in all its vital parts may be changed by an act of parliament; that is, the king, lords, and commons may, if they think proper, abrogate and repeal any existing laws, and pass any new laws in direct opposition to that which the people contemplate and revere as their ancient constitution. No such laws can be resisted or disobeyed by the subject, nor declared void by their courts of justice as unconstitutional. A written constitution which may be enforced by the judges and appealed to by the people, is therefore most conducive to their happiness and safety.(55)
With this in mind, we can see why "public servants" and "law enforcement officers" remain unimpressed when informed by "Patriots," "sovereign state Citizens," "Christian Coalitions," or any other political faction or party, that they have acted "unconstitutionally." The oath sworn by these men is to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." This is no longer "the original Constitution" — the written document ratified by the several States for their own general welfare, now declared to be a "dead constitution" — but the ever-growing and ever-changing mass of codes, rules, regulations, Executive Orders, international treaties (e.g. N.A.F.TA., G.A.T.T., the United Nations charter, etc.) that have their basis in military law, not the Common Law.
A Bankrupt Corporation is Owned By its Creditors
We have seen very clear evidence that by 1933, the U.S. Government was completely bankrupt. This was openly declared in 1934 by Representative William Lemke of North Dakota:
This nation is bankrupt; every State in this Union is bankrupt; the people of the United States, as a whole, are bankrupt. The public and private debts of this Nation, which are evidenced by bonds, mortgages, notes, or other written instruments amount to about $250,000,000,000, and it is estimated that there is about $50,000,000,000 of which there is no record, making in all about $300,000,000,000 of public and private debts. The total physical cash value of all the property in the United States is now estimated at about $70,000,000,000.
That is more than it would bring if sold at public auction. In this we do not include debts or the evidence of debts, such as bonds, mortgages, and so forth. These are not physical property. They will have to be paid out of the physical property. How are we going to pay $300,000,000,000 with only $70,000,000,000?(56)
Representative McFadden believed that this bankruptcy was caused by "the corrupt and dishonest Federal Reserve," but the roots of the problem, though certainly exasperated by the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, actually go back much further in American history. The U.S. Treasury had been bankrupt in 1861 and it is impossible to believe that a protracted and costly war of four years' duration could have improved the situation at all. According to the candid admission of Representative James Trafficant, Jr. of Ohio in 1993, "We are now in chapter 11 [bankruptcy]" and those who write and pass the laws in this country are merely "official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. Government."(57) The importance of this statement must not be missed:
The debtor rehabilitation provisions of the [Bankruptcy] Code (Chapters 11, 12 and 13) differ, however, from the straight bankruptcy in that the debtor looks to rehabilitation and reorganization, rather than liquidation, and the creditor looks to future earnings of the bankrupt, rather than property held by the bankrupt to satisfy their claims....
When a debtor business entity realizes it will become insolvent or will be unable to pay its debts as they mature, it can petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The debtor business normally is permitted to continue its operations under court supervision until some plan of reorganization is approved by two-thirds of the creditors.(58)
The "future earnings of the bankrupt" can be none other than the future earnings of the American people and their posterity collected by the Government through taxation. Furthermore, a "bankruptcy trustee" is a "person appointed by the Bankruptcy Court to take charge of the debtor estate, [and] to collect assets...."(59) Are we to conclude, then, that our supposed representatives in Congress are nothing more than collection agents? One thing that can be stated with certainty is that a bankrupt corporation, which is considered civiliter mortuus ("civilly dead"), can make no law, enter no contract, or do anything other than what its creditors will allow.(60) As mentioned before, it is "public policy" that is the "law" being enforced in America today in order to promote "public safety" — the "public" being, not the American people, but the bondholders, corporations and big business interests, and ultimately, the international bankers behind the Federal Reserve system who control the President, the Congress, and the entire judicial system, through the national debt created by the Lincoln Administration and legalized by the Fourteenth Amendment. If it was impossible for the combined debt of the country in 1934, which totaled between $250 and $300 billion, to be paid even if all property owned by every citizen had been sold at auction, how is it possible that the current debt of nearly $8 trillion(61) can be paid when there is no longer any property to be sold? Every "dollar" in the pocket of every American is owned by the Federal Reserve, and thus every piece of property, every stock, every asset, and every service which has been purchased with such "money" is likewise owned by the Federal Reserve. A more complete slavery could not be imagined.
This is all anything but a conspiracy which only the John Birch Society has uncovered, since it has had full and open disclosure in the public record for the past one-hundred and forty years — and yet the American people go about their daily lives for the most part unconcerned about their own condition, and even contributing with patriotic zeal to further their own oppression. Rather than enjoying the "more perfect Union" envisioned by our forefathers, it is obvious that we, their posterity, are instead living examples of the effectiveness of the primary weapon of conquest — deception:
...[A]llow them [the conquered] to live under their own laws, taking tribute of them, and creating within the country a government composed of a few who will keep it friendly to you.... A city used to liberty can be more easily held by means of its citizens than in any other way....
...[T]hey must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.... [The conqueror should] not wish that the people... should have occasion to regret the loss of any of their old customs....(62)
Endnotes
1. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, pages 9-10.
2. Whiting, War Powers of the President, page 59.
3. Whiting, op. cit., page 51.
4. U.S. Constitution, Fifth Amendment.
5. Whiting, War Powers of the President, page 52.
6. Whiting, op. cit., page 54.
7. Whiting, op. cit., page 57.
8. Francis Lieber, LL.D., Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field (Gen. Orders No. 100, Adjutant-General's Office, 1863), Section II, Clause 31.
9. Birkhimer, Military Government, pages 191-192.
10. George Cyrus Thorpe, Contracts Payable in Gold (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1933; Senate Document No. 43).
11. Lieber, Instructions for Armies in the Field, Section II, Clause 31.
12. Whiting, War Powers of the President, pages 54-55.
13. Lieber, Instructions for Armies in the Field, Section I, Clause 6.
14. John Quincy Adams, speech delivered in the United States House of Representatives, 14 and 15 April 1842; quoted by Whiting, War Powers of the President, page 80.
15. Dooley v. U.S. (1901), 182 U.S. 222.
16. Lieber, Instructions for Armies in the Field, Section I, Clause 10., Section I, Clause 10.
17. It is significant to note that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is under the U.S. Department of the Treasury, rather than the Department of Justice.
18. 38 Ch. Div. 359; Chaffee v. Farmer's Co-Op Elevator Co., 93 N.D. 585, 168 N.W. 616, 618.
19. F. Harold Essert, essay: "What is Meant By the 'Police Power'"? Nebraska Law Bulletin (Lincoln, Nebraska: College of Law, The University of Nebraska, 1933), Volume XII, page 208.
20. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Jackson, quoted by U.S. Senate, "Introduction," Emergency Powers Statutes, page 14.
21. U.S. Senate, ibid.
22. U.S. Senate, ibid.
23. U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3.
24. Birkhimer, Military Government, pages 204, 207. The reader should take special note of the term "enforced contributions" in this quote. One of the taxes levied against employees within the United States — the Social Security tax — originated in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (F.I.C.A.).
25. Bill Benson and M.J. Beckman, The Law That Never Was: The Fraud of the Sixteenth Amendment and Personal Income Tax (South Holland, Illinois: Constitutional Research Association, 1985). In 1986, the "never ratified" arguments of Benson and Beckman were examined by the 7th Circuit Court and dismissed as frivolous. The ruling of U.S. v. Thomas stated in part:
Benson and Beckman did not discover anything; they rediscovered something that Secretary Knox considered in 1913. Thirty-eight states ratified the sixteenth amendment, and thirty-seven sent formal instruments of ratification to the Secretary of State. (Minnesota notified the Secretary orally, and additional states ratified later; we consider only those Secretary Knox considered.) Only four instruments repeat the language of the sixteenth amendment exactly as Congress approved it. The others contain errors of diction, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. The text Congress transmitted to the states was: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
Many of the instruments neglected to capitalize "States," and some capitalized other words instead. The instrument from Illinois had "remuneration" in place of "enumeration"; the instrument from Missouri substituted "levy" for "lay"; the instrument from Washington had "income" not "incomes"; others made similar blunders.
Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and — taking into account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial problems — advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.
Although Thomas urges us to take the view of several state courts that only agreement on the literal text may make a legal document effective, the Supreme Court follows the "enrolled bill rule." If a legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the appropriate officials, the court treats that document as properly adopted. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 36 L.Ed. 294, 12 S.Ct. 495 (1892). The principle is equally applicable to constitutional amendments. See Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 66 L.Ed. 505, 42 S.Ct. 217 (1922), which treats as conclusive the declaration of the Secretary of State that the nineteenth amendment had been adopted. In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6 (7th Cir. 1986), we relied on Leser, as well as the inconsequential nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to Thomas's. See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385, 59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary's decision is not transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox's decision is now beyond review (U.S. v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1253).
The fact that arguments based on the supposed defects of the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment have been ruled frivolous and the matter declared to be "beyond review" has not deterred the countless "gurus" in the so-called "patriot" movement from continuing to extract exorbitant fees from their gullible followers for their "untax" schemes.
26. Charles Edward Merriam, The Written Constitution and the Unwritten Attitude (New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931), page 14.
27. Lieber, Instructions for Armies in the Field, Section V, Clause 86.
28. Arnold G. Ginnow and Milorad Nikolic (editors), Corpus Juris Secundum (St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Company, 1988), Volume XV, pages 383-385.
29. Birkhimer, Military Government, pages 277-278.
30. Lieber, Instructions for Armies in the Field, Section I, Clauses 12-13.
31. Hefferman v. Porter (1867), 6 Coldw. (46 Tenn.) 391.
32. Duncan v. Kahanamoku (1946), 327 U.S. 304.
33. The Law of Land Warfare: Army Field Manual 27-10 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983 O-381-647 [5724]), page 11.
34. United States Army Regulations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1 October 1979; AR 840-10), Chapter 8.
35. Henry Suzzallo, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D. (editor), The National Encyclopedia (New York: P.F. Collier and Son Corporation, 1944), Volume IV, page 326.
36. 34 Ops. Atty. Gen. 483.
37. Army Regulations, Chapter 2. This flag also appears as a shoulder patch on law enforcement uniforms, even those of police at the municipal (city) level — additional evidence that such men are agents of the occupying military force rather than the servants of the people, as is commonly believed.
38. U.S. Senate, "The War Power," The Constitution of the United States: An Analysis and Interpretation (U.S. Senate Document No. 92-82, Ninety-Second Congress, Second Session; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), page 334.
39. U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11.
40. U.S. Government, Report of the Commission of Intergovernmental Relations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955), pages 24-25.
41. Ex parte Gerlach (D.C.) 247 F. 616, 617; Ex parte Jochen (D.C.) 257 F. 200, 205; Ex parte Mikell (D.C.) 253 F. 817, 819; Hines v. Mikell (C.C.A.) 259 F. 28, 30.
42. Uniform Code of Military Justice Act, 5 May 1950; Statutes at Large, Volume LXIV, page 108; Title 50 United States Code, Sections 551-736.
43. In its 1973 report, the U.S. Senate wrote the following: "Another pertinent question among many, that the Special Committee's work has revealed, concerns the statutory authority for domestic surveillance by the FBI. According to some experts, the authority for domestic surveillance appears to be based upon an Executive Order issued by President Roosevelt during an emergency period. If it is correct that no firm statutory authority exists, then it is reasonable to suggest that the appropriate committees enact proper statutory authority for the FBI with adequate provision for oversight by Congress" (page 10). Thus, as late as the 1970s, the FBI did not even have a statutory basis for its existence. This was yet another example of Congress' ex post facto rubber-stamping the unconstitutional activities of the Executive branch during a contrived national emergency.
44. "[I]f the judge's opinion in matter of law must rule the issue of fact submitted to the jury, the trial by jury would be useless" (Sparf v. United States [1895] 156 U.S. 51).
45. According to Patrick Henry, a man's peers are "those who reside near him, his neighbors, and who are well acquainted with his character and situation in life" (Elliott, Debates in the Several State Conventions, Volume III, page 579).
46. Prize Cases (1862), 2 Black, 674.
47. Essert, "Police Power," pages 214-215.
48. Black's Law Dictionary (Sixth Edition), page 1406.
49. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, page 264.
50. J. Millard, dissenting opinion in Southwest Washington Production Credit Assn. v. Fender (1944) 21 Wash. 2d 349, 363-364.
51. Manual for Courts Martial, page IV-4, Article 104(C)(6)(c). The offenses that may be committed by a civilian, which are classified as "Acts of War," cover one hundred and twenty-five pages in this manual.
52. Laws Regarding the State of Siege of 9th August, 1849, Chapter III, Article IX.
53. Thurgood Marshall, bicentennial speech given at Maui, Hawaii on 6 May 1987.
54. George P. Fletcher, "Unsound Constitution," The New Republic, 23 June 1997, pages 14-15. For a good response to Fletcher's arguments, see Ron Paul's comments in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional Record — House, 1 August 1997.
55. Rawle, View of the Constitution, pages 15-16.
56. Representative William Lemke, Congressional Record — House, 3 March 1934.
57. James Traficant, Jr., op. cit., 17 March 1993, page H 1303.
58. Black's Law Dictionary (Sixth Edition), page 147.
59. Ibid.
60. Op. cit., pages 245, 246.
61. National Debt Clock, http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock. For a shocking dose of reality, the reader is encouraged to go to this site and repeatedly hit the "refresh" button on his keyboard. As of this writing, the amount of the debt increases by increments of at least 100,000 "dollars" every two or three seconds and 1.5 billion every day.
62. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Random House, 1950), pages 18, 182-183.
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