Escape The American Delusion - Part Two

We are trapped in an intentionally manufactured delusion, but don't know i. This book exposes the delusion and how we came to be trapped in it.

PART TWO

Chapter 12
The first layer of the onion

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams �" this may be madness.  To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness �" and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!
Miguel de Cervantes, "Man of La Mancha"

To understand that we can reclaim our freedom and our inalienable rights, let us begin by comparing and contrasting two cultures.  One that overcame its violent ways and the other, ours, that has not yet been either willing or able to do that.  Both stories are part of our American history.

On a clear summer’s day, the leaders of five nations were meeting around their yearly council fires.   The purpose was to devise a social system where perpetual peace could reign on the earth.  

The leaders had been meeting for many years, ever since they were visited by Deganawidah (The Peacemaker), Hiawatha, and a woman named Jingosaseh who was the mother of clan mothers.  The three asked the chiefs to put away their old ways of war in order to establish a union of peace and power.  One stick, they said, can be easily broken, but a union of sticks is not so easy to break.   The Peacemaker warned the leaders of the Five Nations never to quarrel among themselves, for: “while you are quarreling with each other, the white panther (the fire dragon of discord) will come and take your rights and privileges away. Then your grandchildren will suffer and be reduced to disgrace.”
At about 4:30 in the afternoon of August 18, 909  , they looked up to see why the day had suddenly turned to dark and the air became chilled.  What they saw directly overhead was nothing less than the sign they had been told to look for.  The sun had turned to blackness.  An unending ring of a council fire surrounded the black disk.  Assured by what they saw, a confederation of nations, a democratic republic, was born.

This was no ordinary democratic republic by our standards.  Within it, there was no war or violence among the included nations.  There were no police, no jails, no lawyers, no crime, no taxes, therefore no IRS, no NSA, no poverty, no abandoned children, no domestic abuse, no class system, and no mental illness.  There wasn’t even a concept of money or land ownership, so there was no hoarding of wealth.  Nature provided its abundance if it was nurtured and protected.  They lived in and were part of nature, and it was their job to protect it, because it was nature’s common nest on which all of life depended, and they were capable of knowing how to nurture it.  

The confederation consisted of nations, which consisted of tribes, which consisted of clans.  Each was self-governing within the constraints of the whole.  Perhaps the most amazing, from a typical American view, was the presumption of total equality.  Though men and women held different roles in their society due to the different “natural” strengths between females and males, no one was disenfranchised politically.  Men and women were halves of a whole and neither could survive except as a whole.  

The democracy was democracy by consensus. Everyone had an equal voice in choosing laws to live by.  If unanimity could not be achieved, no law passed until it could be achieved, no matter how long it took.  This would assure a strength that could never be broken through dissent.

The annual meeting of the confederation consisted of a chief, who was chosen from among the gathering chiefs, with the wisest being most esteemed.  Two councils met independently before coming together to discuss what they had learned.  This provision allowed both groups to discuss ideas independently before coming together to see whether there was agreement on a solution, or whether the issue needed more discussion before an idea was thoroughly understood.  Disagreement did not imply that someone was wrong and someone right, as our political disagreements do.  Disagreement centered in the idea that all disagreement is rooted in ignorance.  Where there is disagreement, both sides can learn.   Disagreements were met with curiosity and a desire to understand how the two could become as one or evolve into something else.

In the confederate, national, and clan governments, the chiefs were public servants in the truest sense of the words.  They had no independent authority.  They simply conveyed the wishes of those they represented, returning to their local council fires with ideas and concerns they learned at national or regional gatherings.  

Ideas were discussed in-depth around local council fires.  The people used their own ability to reason in order to resolve any problem or question they faced.  These discussions were part of their educational system that encouraged children to become mature and respectful adults.  

Honesty was an essential component of peace.  It could not survive without it.  Because individuals no longer hid behind suspicions and fear, and they were always embraced by love and mutual respect, they were a non-judgmental people.  No idea was laughed at.  All ideas deserved their fair and respectful consideration.  That’s how children were educated.  Every person deserved to be treated as each wanted him or her self to be treated.

The people of the confederacy called themselves the Haudenosaunee, meaning people of the long house.  Many many hundreds of years later, when French explorers wandered through Haudenosaunee territory, they called the Haudenosaunee the Iroquois, which is one of the names they are known as today.    The Haudenosaunee formed the first and only democracy-by-consensus Constitutional Republic in all of known history.  It remains the gold standard that no allegedly sophisticated society has even approached.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, a very different culture with very different values had sprung up on the European continent.  We call that culture “Feudalism”.

In Europe, the pope, considered the voice of God on earth, maintained his own armies and knights to protect him in those cases when God couldn’t or wouldn’t.  He granted kings the right to own huge swaths of land in return for further military protection, along with appropriate payment of “God’s portion” of the profits that the kings made from the arrangement.   

The kings, in turn, granted fiefdoms to those lords who promised loyalty along with payment of the king’s portion, paid as “tribute”.  Lords then granted privileged status to loyal knights who oversaw mercenary armies that defended the lord, the king, and the pope.  The armies earned their income from the plunder they won in battle, paying a portion of the booty to the lord as well as the local parish (God) as tribute.  

In addition to paying tributes to the king, lords were also expected to pay God His portion through the local parishes, as established by the pope.  Lords earned their required tributes, plus beloved wealth, by attacking and sacking neighboring fiefdoms, both in their country and in neighboring enemy kingdoms, that also existed only with the consent of the pope.  This caused the burning of fields and forests as methods of getting an enemy to surrender or be starved out.  Lords also earned their wealth by profiting off the slave labor of the serfs.  

The serfs were nothing more than work animals and weren’t considered fully human.  Escape from serfdom was impossible because there was no land that was not “owned” and trespass could be a capitol offense.  Furthermore, if a slave asked the wrong question, or didn’t serve obediently and with the joyful attitude that they were told Lord Jesus himself required, the serf would be whipped or killed, at a Lord’s discretion.  Criticizing superiors was treason.  Furthermore, refusing to serve masters willingly and in happy obedience to them, was a crime against God, and doing so would land you in the eternal fire of Hell, where one would burn alive, without ever being consumed, with the torture continuing for the rest of eternity.  This image was perpetually emblazoned in the minds of the serfs as they watched or heard the screams of an occasional heretic being whipped to death or occasionally burned alive, which was intended to drive the point home and sear the image into the serfs’ consciousness.  

In contrast to the Haudenosaunee, in the European cultural paradigm, everyone lived in fear.  A marauding army could easily bring life as all knew it to an end without warning.  Distrust of neighbors was omnipresent.  Treaties couldn’t be trusted. Death and the devil were always looking around the corner, scheming to bring everything down.

Seven hundred years after the establishment of the Haudenosaunee, these two very different cultures were about to come together. Both had evolved considerably during the intervening years.

In America, the Haudenosaunee nation had grown from beyond its borders in upstate New York to include many nations from the Chesapeake Bay, west through Kentucky to the Mississippi River, North to the headwaters, then east through Canada to the Connecticut River, and south to Long Island sound, where it followed the shore back to the Chesapeake Bay.  Contact had been made with the Cherokee Nation of the Southeast, which was, at the point of east meeting west, adamantly declining the invitation to join.

Feudalism was still deeply entrenched in European culture, but it had changed its form.  When in 1095, Pope Urban II found his position threatened due to factions within the church, and as he feared becoming yet another martyred pope, he devised a way to unite two enemies against a common foe.  Inventing a reason for the first crusade, (based on something that had happened five years earlier), he promised guaranteed entrance to heaven to anyone who died reclaiming the Holy Land.  This indulgence led to unheard of barbarism as the under-supplied troops marched through Europe, then south toward Jerusalem, massacring Jews, plundering villages, and generally violating God’s laws with impunity.  

The crusades, however dark their history, opened trade routes that proved far more profitable than fiefdoms.  To take advantage of those profits, lords either sold serfs their freedom or evicted them outright, leaving them to gather along the trade routes, where they formed towns.  Lords found it far more profitable to rape and pillage places outside of the Roman Empire than to feed off the home turf where gleanings had become scarce.  Trade also brought safety as lords were no longer leading troops into battle, but were merely turning goods into profits.  Others took the real risks.   Having separated themselves from the land, the heart of a fiefdom, nature lost its place in the important scheme of things.  Nature now existed outside of people, to be sacked and converted into profits.

Coinage replaced wealth as the currency of the day.  Kings reclaimed their lands and were requiring that tributes (taxes) be paid in coins made of precious metals.  It was still feudalism, to be sure.  The class system was still strongly in place.  The pope was still in charge, but Lords were now aristocrats.  They held titles rather than lands.  Mercenaries were now soldiers serving the king who paid them directly.  Communities hired police and built prisons, as well as the gallows.  Serfs became known as free-slaves, but were serfs none-the-less.  

The only improvement in the life of a free-slave was that with enough creativity, enough willingness to take advantage of the disadvantages of friends, neighbors, and family, along with a calculated determination, a serf could rise above his born station in life.  He could become a merchant and perhaps even a burgher, who was still operating under the control of, and only with the approval of, the monarch, who could remove him at will.  He was still a serf, but he was a serf with benefits.  A woman was still a chattel that had no rights or freedoms.  Money had become the social glue that held the fabric of society together.  Relationships, that the human species requires, no longer mattered.

It was more or less in this environment that these two cultures came together six hundred years after the establishment of union of the Haudenosaunee.

In 1497, when Columbus found what is now Santo Domingo, he had never seen such amazing things.  Throughout the Americas, there were many peace-loving, egalitarian, and democracy by consensus cultures, though none that we know of preserved their history as carefully as the Haudenosaunee.  Like the Haudenosaunee, none of them used any form of money or had any concept of wealth, so they did not have a reason to hoard.  They knew that things spoil, so hoarding is wasteful.  So is needlessly taking from mother earth.   

Scholars say that these cultures had a “gift economy”, but that is not a fair representation in that it includes the same bias that Columbus maintained.  Social relationships were the only social glue worth preserving and strengthening.  Relationships were social currency; a natural form of currency.  What unthinkable contradictions it must still seem to a culture like ours that is bound together by love of money, wealth, and inequality.

In a relationship economy, gifts are sometimes given, and favors are done for others as tokens of friendship and respect. If anyone has a need, people immediately try to fill that need, for no other reason that it gives them pleasure to do so.  No return gift is ever expected.  Excess possessions were a hindrance.  Hidden under the giving is trust of neighbors, who are deemed family.  All are taken care of.  All are valued.  Underlying allo is the realization that friendship is an assurance of safety for all.  There was no need for fear.  (This is precisely what those six girls in the Introduction discovered.)

Columbus arrived in the early years of the Spanish Inquisition.  He intended to profit from his adventure, while converting the newly discovered “heathens” to Christianity, a task he saw as his responsibility.  Though he found a peaceful, guileless, and unarmed people, his European mind could not comprehend what he was seeing. Not appreciating the native beauty and practicality of the inhabitants of the lands he found, and not even recognizing that they had a government, so invisible was it, that he immediately thought of the profit opportunity.  How easy it would be, he wrote the queen, to turn the loving and giving people into slaves so that he could profit from their labors.  

Writing to Her Majesty, he penned:  “With fifty men I could subjugate them all and make them do everything that is required of them.”   He later realized that fifty men were far more than necessary when he wrote, “They have no arms, and are without warlike instincts; they all go naked, and are so timid that a thousand would not stand before three of our men. So that they are good to be ordered about, to work and sow, and do all that may be necessary, and to build towns, and they should be taught to go about clothed and to adopt our customs”.

Little more than a month later, after noting the beauty and abundance on the islands, he wrote, “When there are such lands there should be profitable things without number.”  For the natives who lived in harmony with the land, there was abundance BECAUSE they did not plunder it �" having no wealth concept that rendered plunder possible.  The idea of destroying the nest that provided abundance for all was literally and insanely unthinkable.

Because of cultural differences, Columbus misunderstood what was happening when gifts were exchanged at their initial meeting.  He wrote:  “As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk's bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl.”

Clearly, the peaceful, weaponless inhabitants, having received gifts from visitors, who did not speak Columbus’ language, were eager to return the honor and symbols of friendship by giving gifts of their own.  That’s how assurances of peace are given.  But Columbus did not see it as an exchange of friendship.  He saw a free-market exchange of immediate value for value.  

Of the people, he wrote, “they are so artless and so free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts.”

They were doing exactly as Columbus’ Jesus said to do, (living without money and trusting Nature’s God/laws of nature to take care of them while treating others as they wanted to be treated).  Unfortunately, Columbus couldn’t see how they were already living according to the teachings of the one he wanted to force them to worship in churches.  He saw them as primitives or sub-humans.  They were a new kind of work animals, and work animals were to be worked for profit.  

Having come from a culture with a rigid wealth-based class system, he did not understand the workings of a friendly group of people who were of co-equal status, and who did not understand what “poor” meant.  That they wore no clothes had nothing to do with poverty.  They did not know what poverty was.  In the absence of wealth or money, there can be no poverty.  Where there is food to eat and water to drink and a climate that doesn’t require clothes, how can there be poverty?  It is the same in the north.  Where there is food to eat, water to drink, and a way to make clothing, shelter, and warmth, how can there be poverty?

Going about naked was common sense to Columbus’ heathens, seeing as they lived on a hot and humid tropical island.  To them, it was Columbus who must have appeared strange in his formal and restrictive wool clothing, heavy boots, and metal helmet that are so out of place in such a climate with its jungle environment.  Nor could Columbus comprehend, let alone conceive of something as simple and workable as a classless social construct based on friendship and trust.  Neither culture recognized what the other perceived, even though both participated in the same event.

When the conquistadors arrived in South America and the American Southwest, finding the same peace-loving and helpful cultures that Columbus found, atrocities that you read about earlier became the norm .  Slow torture, dismemberments, killing for sport, slavery, rape, killing of infants in front of their mothers, and every other sort of barbarity were common.  When the pope finally announced that they should be converted, this brought a new round of violence in forced conversions.  Free-slaves would be able to tithe willingly rather than pay God’s portion through indirect means by virtue of their forced slave labor.

North America’s first contact after the earlier unrecorded Norse contact, came when the Jamestown settlement party landed.  They met the Haudenosaunee just as they were reaching out to the Cherokee, but as the Jamestown settlement disappeared in less than a year, the next meaningful contact with North American indigenous peoples began at Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620, at which point the Haudenosaunee Constitutional Republic had been established for more than 700 years.  As more communities were established in the New World, word made its way back to Europe about these incredible people whose value system contrasted the European value system so adroitly.   

The “heathens” had a workable governing system, whereby, Europe, that was constantly at war, and because of that had destroyed field and forest, did not have a single workable governing system or a sustainable eco system.   The heathens lived amidst unbelievable abundance.  They weren’t exploiting it for money and had not destroyed it in the name of war.  Their value system included nurturing nature, of which they were a part�"an unthinkable concept in the minds of the Christian European invaders.  The heathens were initially described as the happiest and friendliest people the settlers had ever met.  None of it made any sense.

Not so coincidentally, in Europe, up sprang The Enlightenment and the age of reason.  We, who still harbor learned, and deeply entrenched ideas about the native peoples, seem to think that the white, educated, (thus well-to-do) European writers of the enlightenment just happened upon ideas of freedom, equality, and self-governance; that these ideas sprang forth out of a vacuum of nothingness.  But that wasn’t the case.  How shocking it must have been for those who were educated by friars in a feudal culture, and knowing nothing else, to look upon a culture that embraced freedom, and did so with utmost responsibility for one another as well as the natural resources, both of which European culture systematically destroys.  How could they explain, in the wake of inquisitions and religious wars, how a culture living amidst such abundance, not knowing never-ending fear, didn’t believe in God?  It could hardly have seemed fair.  Why would God prefer and profoundly bless these unsophisticated and inferior heathens

Until then, the idea of a power hierarchy based on wealth and power, with armies to defend the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless (when God couldn’t or wouldn’t), was the only paradigm that the Europeans had known for over a millennium.  That contradiction was worth thinking about and writing about.  They did both.

John Locke looked at the native American cultures and reasoned his way from the natural order of things that the natives adapted themselves to so well, and wrote how, to his thinking, the accumulation (hoarding) of wealth evolved and how slavery is an agreement on the part of the slave to allow himself to be owned by his master.  It was, of course, the natural order of things.  

In his “Second Treatise of Government” he offered a step by step explanation of how the sharing of resources comes with natural honesty and cooperation.  He began with the assumption that all of nature is granted in common to all of its inhabitants, but once man had applied his labor to it, that property became personal property.  The stream might be held in common, he said, but once you draw a pitcher of water from it, the water in the pitcher is privately held.  In this way, "Right and conveniency went together; for as a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of. This left no room for controversy about the title, nor for encroachment on the right of others; what portion a man carved to himself, was easily seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest, to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed.”

He proceeded to explain that if someone offered him a trinket or piece of shiny metal in exchange for that which his labor produced, then a man can hold much more of that which was given in common, because nothing goes to waste seeing as the trinket or gold coin doesn’t spoil.  He is providing the rationale for defending the governing aristocracy.  He escapes looking at the obvious.  He tacitly credits an evolutionary step to the European male’s superiority and advanced culture, as the God he personally believed in had intended.

This influential man who speaks of the natural rights of man, and how to sidestep them, invested in the slave trade, which may help explain why he applies his bias to the issue of slavery.  He writes that for as long as a man claims to own another man, thus depriving him of his freedom and natural rights, a state of war exists between them. But there is a way to achieve a “perfect condition of slavery”.  By failing to commit suicide or draw death unto himself, the slave has tacitly agreed to his slavery, thus he must obey his masters:  “No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it: for, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.

“This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive: for, if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases, as long as the compact endures: for, as has been said, no man can, by agreement, pass over to another that which he hath not in himself, a power over [to end] his own life. ”

Another writer that America can credit for being the country that it is today is Adam Smith, who wrote “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, more commonly referred to as just “Wealth of Nations”.

In that work, he referred to those who sell their labor, as “free slaves”, which is another word for a serf.  He was quick to point out how much more cost-effective free slaves are than purchased slaves.

He explained that if you pay a free slave the equivalent of one day’s wages beyond that which is required for basic survival, the free slaves would have larger families.  The introduction of new workers into the marketplace would lower the cost of labor because of supply and demand.  That would, of course, cause profits to grow.  He continued by admitting that this would also cause the majority of the children of free slaves (“the race of laborers”) to die of poverty related causes, but this was to be expected as part of the natural order of things. Apparently to him, excess free slaves are nothing more than the compost that nurtures capitalism.

Smith, like Locke, sees a wealth-based class system as a natural evolution of society.  The way to explain the indigenous peoples’ happiness and abundance was to declare them to be a poor and inferior species, rather than a superior culture that had learned how to live in peace amid abundance, and absolutely free from slavery or any form of domination.  He viewed them as the most primitive of all societies.  He said that what they call equality is nothing more than poverty with a different name:  “The first period of society, that of hunters, admits of no such [social, financial, or political] inequality. Universal poverty establishes their universal equality; and the superiority, either of age or of personal qualities, are the feeble, but the sole foundations of authority and subordination. There is, therefore, little or no authority or subordination in this period of society.”

He even goes on to explain how the cruelty that was the hallmark of the Spanish conquest was actually good for the people who were harmed.  “In spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires are probably more populous now than they ever were before; and the people are surely very different; for we must acknowledge, I apprehend, that the Spanish creoles are in many respects superior to the ancient Indians.”

Even the great Adam Smith could not comprehend that the people held full authority over the leader who served, and that individuals were sovereigns over themselves by a well-reasoned egalitarian social compact.  They had long ago evolved beyond their own kind of class system where the victors ate the conquered warriors or enslaved prisoners.   They gave up that which so many of our “haves” venerate, even as so many of the “have-nots” quietly acquiesce to their given stations in life.

Yet, even as revered writers were penning these words, something very different was happening in the interior regions of the American colonies.  Farmers and artisans who were not living in the eastern cities were getting their first taste of freedom, and they liked it.  With no money available, they were learning to live without money or to use barter instead.  There was a strong sense of “help thy neighbor” in the air, and even barter wasn’t that strong of a need.  In those areas, money was dying off.  No one would let another go hungry for lack of money or something to barter, whereas in the east, a hungry child could go to jail or be whipped for stealing a penny loaf of bread.  The ethics were very different.  It wasn’t exclusively an east v. west worldview shift.  Some enlightened people in the east also saw something very different; something that humankind should aspire to.

As plans for a national government were being discussed and its structural form the cause of much argument, Benjamin Franklin bewailed the fact that:  “It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interests.”

It was also the opinion of Benjamin Franklin that amongst the natives, "Happiness is more generally and equally diffused than in our civilized societies."  Thomas Jefferson, who was equally admiring, said of them, "I am convinced that these societies as the Indians enjoy in their general, mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European government."  

Ultimately, it was the long-standing Haudenosaunee form of government with the maturity and happiness of its people that inspired part of our own Constitutional representative democracy.  Our bicameral legislature with a president came from it, though in different form. The phrase public servant also came from them, though in America, our public servants aren’t servants at all.  They have the right to violate the will of the people, to lie to them, to keep them uninformed, and consider them enemies of the State if they believe it serves a purpose about which we need not be informed.

The rest of the Haudenosaunee’s type of government was ignored.  Ours retained the hierarchical feudal free-slave system in contrast to how all were free and equal in the Haudenosaunee Republic.  Ours chose “the majority rules” model rather than democracy by consensus, but in ours, only a tiny fraction of people could actually participate in government.  The form of majority rules chosen was one where those wealthy enough to hold public office decided policy based on majority rules among themselves, without regard to the interests of the common person, who was considered an inferior species.  This allowed them to serve their own interests in something that is little more than a social club for the privileged few, funded by the underprivileged many, in ongoing transfer of wealth schemes.

In America’s newly formed government, the common people had little to no say.  Only those who could afford to vote (qualify based on income, wealth, and religion) decided which aristocrats would govern.  Those with insufficient property or income, and those who were owned slaves, indentured servants, Indians, and women (who were considered chattels) had no political enfranchisement whatsoever.

This significant shift from the rules of a provably workable democracy of, by, and for the people, to an unworkable one of, by, and for the wealthy elite, created a system of legalized corruption that lives with us to this day.   It is the reason why the Supreme Court took the lead in the coup d’état.  That’s why our government no longer works, and we must understand why it doesn’t work before we can fix that which is broken.

As you read our actual history that, because of the intentional lies we have been taught in public schooling, reads more like fiction than non-fiction, contrast that with the Haudenosaunee culture that our culture aggressively destroyed because of greed and their refusal to enslave themselves in our money-centered, thus violent feudal culture.  Theirs lacked all of our social ills, our never-ending wars, our intrusive totalitarian government, and our environmental degradation.  Theirs was a society that was based on honesty, trust, mutual admiration, equality, respect, freedom, community, and environmental protectionism, things our form of government systematically destroys.

One story that shows the degree to which our governments will lie to us in order to force us to submit to the class warfare that is being waged against us is the story of Shays Rebellion.  We have been told that Shays Rebellion showed us why it was necessary to replace the Articles of Confederation with a stronger Constitution.  That’s not quite right.  It’s not even close.  The story taught to us in public schooling is a lie.  

Once we see the patterns that are regularly employed by those who feed off the misery of the ignorant who were made ignorant on purpose through mandatory schooling, we can begin to reshape our future.  The story of Shays Rebellion will begin to make the pattern very clear.
 Chapter 13
The Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth


 “In a time of universal deceit �"
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell





The story of the Shays Rebellion is one tiny example of history taught using lies rather than facts.  Shays Rebellion is not just one “rebellion”, that was more of an attempted public protest than a rebellion.  Actual public protests occurred over the period of a year, and they spread from and to other areas that were facing the same hardships.  Shays wasn’t even the leader of the so-called rebellion.

It is said that history is written by the victor, and the term “Shays Rebellion” is certainly proof of that.  If truth were the author of history, the whole affair would have been named very differently.  It wasn’t Shays who was in rebellion that fateful day in early February.  He and his companions did not raise their muskets.  Those who were actually behaving illegally were a few wealthy, greedy, and corrupt elected officials who used unlawful violence to force submission by the under-classes, to a self-declared government of wealthy elites who, by their own admission, had lost support of no less than ninety percent of the nation of Massachusetts.

But it is also the story of a people’s call for an end to the class system that is still an entrenched�"and now, because of the lies�"a beloved part of our own culture.  The story we were taught has been excerpted so much that the story you heard is nothing less than a lie.  The truth is that Massachusetts’ violent repression of the peoples’ call for more even-handed democracy sent a double and conflicting message throughout the colonies.

You probably heard that Shays Rebellion involved a group of poor tax-protesting farmers in Western Massachusetts who attacked an armory.  Because the Articles of Confederation prevented the federal government from sending troops, this showed how weak that government was, therefore how necessary it was to have a stronger central government, which is why we have a Constitution today.

A peek at original documents shows a very different story than the one presented to us.  The true story is an important one to understand.   An absolutely essential part of the untold story includes how the middle class was intentionally impoverished by their victimizers. It is a pattern that repeats itself today. That’s why we must understand it.  When we recognize the elements of the pattern, we can protect ourselves from the Patriotism Response that leads us to work against our own interests.

Many who think of early colonial history think of taxation without representation.  That is not quite right.  All the colonies were self-governing.  They elected their own representatives (free white male property owners, at least), printed their own money, passed their own taxes, and raised their own militias.  What they did not have was a shared colonial seat in the British Parliament, but that came further down the list than the abhorrence of judicial review.

Taxes passed by the British Parliament are estimated to be trifling.  They are thought to have been between one and two percent at the most, but as these taxes were sales taxes on things (stamp taxes), whether the tax affected you or not, and how much it affected you, was determined by how affluent your tastes or strong your ambitions.  They affected the wealthy, not the poor farmers, artisans, and fishing villagers, who had no desire to go to war against England, and who were largely self-sufficient.  They could make their own paper, dies, inks, fabrics, clothes, tools, etc in addition to providing their own food.  Those who couldn’t afford imported teas made their own from herbs grown in their yards and gardens.  They didn’t pay the taxes that the wealthy complained about.

Massachusetts lost its representative government because of the Boston Tea Party.  The problem with the tea was not new taxes as we are too often led to believe.  There was no new tax on the tea.  What offended them was Parliament’s attempt to help the East India Company that was in financial difficulty because of an excessive British tea inventory caused by Parliament’s misguided tax policy.  To help it recover, Parliament allowed the East India Company’s tea to be traded in the colonies at subsidized prices.  Because of now favored tax policy, the company could now sell its tea cheaper than the merchant-class smugglers who had been supplying the colonies with tea.  

After the 1773 Tea Party, Massachusetts was stripped of home rule and its ports were blockaded until the tea was paid for.  Those who had been governing (until they were booted out) established themselves as a de facto second government of Massachusetts.  They began spreading dissent throughout all the colonies, pushing for war, even though none of the others colonies had been punished like Massachusetts.  

The new self-proclaimed de facto government had no legitimate authority.  It couldn’t assess taxes.  It was self-funded.  It was more like a politically oriented social club of wealthy elites, almost all of whom lived in Boston and its nearby surrounds.  If you didn’t own enough land and wealth, you could not be a member of this private club.

The new pseudo government immediately started scamming its would-be citizens. It began issuing papers known as “Bills of Credit”.  (Like the interest-bearing bonds that America uses to raise money.)  These promised repayment in hard money (gold or silver) as early as 1787 when the war was projected to be over.  When it was over, taxes could be implemented to buy them back, plus interest.  They were widely circulated by the wealthy merchants who quickly used them to pay off their debts, knowing that they were over-printing the bonds to the point where they would soon be worthless, which was OK because they had a plan.   Merchants in the east helped it become common currency, which allowed them to hoard their gold and silver for after the war, when international trade would again be safe.  When, as expected, the over-printed notes quickly deflated because the same merchant class would not accept them at face value (keeping the poor poorer), the same wealthy merchants who circulated them then bought them up.  Because there were too many in circulation, they only accepted them at a fraction of their face value before hoarding them.  They intended to redeem them at their face value, a notion that the new government would happily oblige soon enough.

Some like John Adams said that it was monetary inexperience that caused these wealthy self-proclaimed governors to over-print currency, but history shows otherwise.  Massachusetts had a long history of using over-printing money for the advantage of the ruling elite and their friends.  They had previously revalued their currency three times because of over-printing.  Things became so bad that Britain shipped twenty-one tons of Spanish silver coins and ten tons of British copper coins to Massachusetts to stabilize the economy.  When Massachusetts started printing money again, Parliament stopped it, which antagonized the unruly Massachusetts government.

Given Massachusetts’ history with printed currency, one can assume that the Massachusetts de facto government/social club was well aware of what it was doing when it ordered the over-printing of new Bills of Credit that they turned into common currency with the help of the merchants.  In fact, the practice was so profitable (for all but the commoners), that news spread to other parts of the colonies, and soon all were printing excess currency.  Soon money everywhere was worthless, though not all merchants made out as well as the Massachusetts’ merchants did.  The celebrated Adam Smith wrote in his book “Wealth of Nations”, “It bears the evident marks of having originally been…a scheme of fraudulent debtors to cheat their creditors”.

When you think of how destabilized the currency was before the establishment of the Constitutional government and Alexander Hamilton’s plan to fix it with a national bank, be aware that this is why.  It was part of an ongoing con to take from the poor to give to the rich, as was the bank that would allegedly fix the problem, as you will see in a later chapter.  In fact, Alexander Hamilton actually spear-headed the tensions that become so heated that the Shays Rebellions began.  He knew that if pushed beyond their limits, the commoners would rebel, giving him the opportunity to make a case for a monarchy.

The same type of grievously contemptible misconduct was also part of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention.  The wealthy, who initiated and controlled the process, were over-represented.

Sessions were held in Boston and Cambridge, a trip of many days for those in western Massachusetts, and the parts that would later become Maine and Vermont.  Unless you lived in or near Boston’s commercial center, it is unlikely that you had any gold or silver, where it circulated in sufficient, though not abundant, supply.  With paper money worthless, and no gold available to those with no ties to the Boston community, rural areas retained the long-standing method of commerce called bartering, if they bartered at all.  They had already established agrarian, cooperative societies.  Until the new government took over, they were doing well enough.

The de-facto governing social club called for a constitutional convention.  Not only were the meetings held in a very distant town by that time’s standards, but they were held in the most expensive city in all of the colonies.  Only a fragment of the westerners could afford to attend.  Some towns hadn’t even been invited to participate until well into the process.  There is no evidence that Vermont’s towns, being in dispute and claimed by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, were ever sent notices.  The heavy representation of aristocrats put a stranglehold on the process.  By the end of the convention, the already minimal participation had declined dramatically.  The largest part of Massachusetts saw it as a waste of time.

Even the constitution’s ratification process was less than honorable. The minutes of the convention show that without notice, the delegates stopped accepting ballots before more than half of the towns submitted ballots, after deciding among them that enough time had passed.  That more ballots continued to arrive after the cut off, should have alerted them to an unacknowledged ethical responsibility, but if it did, no one admitted to it.

There was no talk of inquiring as to why the towns did not send ballots, which, based on declining attendance records during the convention, was already tacitly understood by all.  They didn’t inquire as to whether town and county governments needed more time, nor did they bother to inform them of a future cut-off date.   It appears that had they opened the topic, they would have heard that distant towns and counties saw the proposed constitution as nothing more than a few corrupt aristocrats playing political shenanigans.  They might also have heard that when they have a legal right to form a government when the men who could vote return from the war, such things could be discussed in a central meeting place with fair representation.  But those in the defacto government-social club didn’t ask.

Another questionable affair arose when it came to counting the ballots that they did receive.  Voting on ratification of the proposed constitution was not a simple issue of yes or no.  Each eligible voter voted word by word, and if he didn’t agree with a chapter, an article, a section, or a word, he proposed an amendment. It is very possible that many thousands of proposed amendments were offered.  The minutes show great confusion and several false starts when it came to how to go about counting the puzzling ballots.

The committee tasked with counting the votes twice reported to the full body that the task was impossible.  They were asked to return to committee to find a solution.  (There are no available notes for the committee’s meetings.)

Some voters voted yea or nay.  Some of the ballots said that they would ratify only if their proposed amendments were made.  Others said that they would ratify even if their proposed amendments were not made.  Others proposed amendments but did not declare whether they would approve or reject the constitution if their amendments were not agreed to.  When the first look at ballots were reported in the minutes, only a few counties had submitted any ballots. Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), the final voting method and tally numbers were wholly absent in the minutes of the meetings, now attended by only a few.  Given the detailed nature of the minutes of the convention in every other aspect, this anomaly makes it appear that the vote-counting committee simply gave up and the few remaining simply declared the Constitution ratified.

The delegates unanimously agreed that more than the 60% of the requisite votes had been cast to ratify the Constitution before the unannounced shut-off date.  It was time to have elections and assess taxes to pay for all of the trimmings of the new, second government of Massachusetts�"one that did not have the consent of the governed.

The new constitution increased the wealth-holds that individuals were required to have in order to hold a seat in the new government.  It said that to hold a seat in the Massachusetts Senate, you must own a freehold valued at 300 pounds (sterling), or an estate valued at 600 pounds.   To serve in the House of Representatives, you must own a freehold valuing 100 pounds, or have an estate valued at 200 pounds, and if at any time the value of land or estate falls below this number, you were disqualified from continuing in service. Furthermore, to vote for a representative, you had to be a free male over twenty-one.  A voter was required to own a freehold that produced an income of three pounds per year, which gives you an idea of the relative value of 600 pounds.  A voter did not have to prove an income if he could prove he owned an estate valued at sixty pounds.  Not only were women and slaves not free, but neither were the indentured servants, most of whom were working off passage to get to America.  These voter restrictions were an effective way to disenfranchise those who might object to the unfairness.

The institution of a second formal government immediately created a huge tax burden that hadn’t been there before.  All those government representatives and attendant workers had to be paid a salary commensurate with their new stations in life, plus their expenses.  Sheriffs and constables had to be hired to enforce the acceptance of the new government.  Jails had to be built to contain offenders who might object.  Post offices needed to be established and manned.  Other appointees, couriers, consultants, clerks, emissaries, and others needed to be hired and paid.  Offices were required so buildings were needed, and they had to be furnished and heated in winter.  Stationery had to be designed and printers had to be engaged.  In addition to the needs of the new Massachusetts government, delegates to the Continental Congress still needed to be paid along with the salaries and expenses of the Continental Congress’ ambassadors in Europe. The war was still ongoing and needed to be funded.  The growing war debt had to be paid.  Troops had to be supplied, which created an even greater burden.  All of these things, plus many more, pushed taxes upward.

Intent on shifting those taxes away from themselves, Boston’s aristocrats set to work.  They planned a deceitful and well-executed scheme.  According to the minutes of its sessions, that October, the general court (which is what the Massachusetts Congress was called) passed two laws.  One established the town of Hampshire.  The other provided for the care of soldiers from other states who, while in their state, could not provide for their own care. Then they went on recess.

The General Court waited until January to put the devious part of their plan into effect.  Western representatives, who made the long, arduous journey home after the October recess, would not be able to make it back to Boston in time for the January session.  This era was the time of the “Little Ice Age” when winters were far worse than ours are today.  Travel by carriage was impossible, and even if one were go to by horseback over the mountains, the trip would be difficult and dangerous.  That they couldn’t attend by reason of weather was well known from the early days of the Constitutional Convention when the minutes show that they first saw and repeatedly discussed the problem of participants not able to arrive until after the melt.  The aristocrats took advantage of their anticipated absence to enact laws favorable to themselves.  

With the farmers and the other less-wealthy not represented, the remaining members established salaries that the rest, who were living off the land, would read about and then gasp. Where they were hard-pressed to come up with even a single copper coin among a whole village, the Governor’s salary was set at the exorbitant and unheard of amount of 1,000 pounds sterling.

They changed the date of the expiration of the worthless Bills of Credit, calling for them to be repaid by the government at face value in gold and silver starting immediately.  Again, these Bills of Credit were not in circulation in the agrarian regions.  Those that had come their way were quickly sold to the merchants for whatever they could get before they were worth nothing, not knowing that the merchants knew they would be repaid at face value by a self-declared government in the not-too-distant future.

The legislature instituted taxes on everything that they could think of that wouldn’t harm the wealthy.  Taxes on imports and exports that the wealthy thrived on received very favorable treatment.   Bills of credit being hoarded by the wealthy were not taxed like other wealth was, even though they were considered a legitimate form of wealth.

The taxes that they did assess were harsh and one-sided.  There was a poll tax scheme .  The poll tax assessed the heads of the wealthiest in Massachusetts at the same rate that it assessed the head of the poorest and most destitute person.  If the taxes weren’t paid, regardless of the reason, the delinquents would go to debtors’ prison.  The debtors stayed in the vermin infested places until they paid the tax, the legal costs associated with their imprisonment (which grew to more than four times that which the law allowed ), their food, shelter, and other costs associated with their confinements during their stay.  This forced great hardship on the families who were generally not able to come up with the money to buy a loved one’s freedom because there was no currency circulating in most of Massachusetts.

The General court also passed a series of land taxes. The head taxes and land taxes were to be paid in either “hard money”, meaning silver or gold coin, or those old Bills of Credit that were suddenly to be redeemed at face value.   This was a really sweet system for the few.  Having virtually stolen the pieces of paper that they themselves had made worthless, they hoarded them.  This meant that the wealthy were able to pay their taxes with worthless scraps of paper while the lower classes were required by law to produce far more gold than existed in the entire state of Massachusetts or lose everything they had.  The terms were absolutely impossible.

If the farmers didn’t produce the hard money, their farms would be foreclosed and bought up by the same eastern merchants and aristocrats at fire-sale prices.  The proceeds produced by the auctions would go to pay off the debts.  If it didn’t pay them off, there was always the debtors’ prison.  Meanwhile, those easterners who bought the farms as speculation, had plenty of room left for more profits.

During the war, those families that had no access to either hard or paper money without selling parts of their farm in exchange for coinage, could pay war taxes in farm goods (crops and well-salted meat, etc.).  After the war, this type of tax payment was no longer allowed.

Making things worse (if you can believe it), the government again issued paper certificates to begin paying the veterans their long-overdue pay for military service.  Then, because of the requirement for hard money to pay the taxes, the government refused to accept its own paper money.  This immediately made the money worthless for all but the speculators who again eagerly bought them for a tiny fraction of their value from veterans who needed gold to pay their taxes to avoid losing their farms and animals, or going to debtor’s prison, leaving their families homeless and destitute.

When the government refused the certificates, the banks holding mortgages based on the anticipated veterans payments, joined in the scheme and also refused to accept the certificates except for minuscule fraction of their promised value.   Now the farmers, most of whom were unwillingly conscripted into military service to fight in a war they didn’t want in the first place, were in serious trouble.  

They had been betrayed and were caught in a trap.  The new aristocratic government had forced them into a debt from which they couldn’t escape.  They had no way to pay either their mortgages or the taxes that were enormously higher than they had ever been under the British crown.  There was no longer any money of any kind available.  They were becoming tax delinquents in the eyes of the aristocracy that forced their mortgages to go into arrears.

Meanwhile, as soon as the war ended, the eastern merchants were having a wonderful time.  The living was easy�"better than it had been in many years.  The end of the war brought a burst of trade activity for the merchants.  The senators and their wealthy friends were profiting handsomely.  The government continued its favoritism of minimal import and export taxes that would have helped replenish the government’s gold supply and encourage the growth of local businesses.  The gold and silver that the merchants had been hoarding were immediately invested in international trade, which meant that gold was going out by the boatload, but little was coming in.

Because of the dishonest pre-war inflationary and fraudulent monetary schemes, the cost of Massachusetts’ labor was high, the highest in the Americas.  This made Massachusetts’ goods expensive.  Foreign goods were far cheaper. The wealthy, including the senators who saw themselves as blameless and only doing what they were supposed to do according to the rules of “economics”, eagerly sought profits even if it meant putting Massachusetts’ citizens out of work and undermining their own nation’s economy, thus their own, as well as its security.  They were doing exactly as Adam Smith warned about in his “Wealth of Nations”.

With no usable money to pay taxes or mortgages, more and more farmers were being dispossessed through seizures and foreclosures. Frustration and discontent turned to anger.

William Manning, who lived near the scene of the last of the Shays Rebellion, penned this summary of what led up to it.   “At the close of the British war, although our paper money died away and left the people greatly in debt by it, and a great public debt was on us by the war, yet there was a large quantity of hard money among us sufficient for a medium. But for want of the proper regulation of trade and with the prices of labor and produce being higher here than in other countries, our merchants shipped the hard money off, load after load, by the hundred thousand dollars together to Britain for trifling gewgaws and things that were of no service to us, until there was but little left.”

This is when the protests that later became known as the Shays Rebellion began.  Some of the incensed set fire to courthouses in two northern Massachusetts towns.  The story was sensationalized in the papers, and word spread.  

As the situation deteriorated, a virtual blizzard of petitions from western Massachusetts flew into Boston. Farmers, townspeople, town governments, and county governments were asking for help with debt relief, a suspension of foreclosures, a request that paper money be issued to enable farmers to pay taxes, that farm goods or even land be accepted as payment of taxes, along with requests for more fair tax laws and less extravagant salaries for government workers. One petition said that their town’s tiny, twenty-eight by thirty-six foot prison was overflowing with over 90 men not able to pay their debts.   Congress did not respond.  

A petition from the town of Athol to the Legislature in May 1786, begged the Legislature to "Take our Situation into Consideration & Do Something for the Relief of your Petitioners by Passing An Act Makeing all Real & Personal Estate a Lawfull Tender." The town informed the General Court "That from the Extreme Scearsety of Cash in the interior parts of this Common welth we are Reduced to the Most Distressing Situation by Suits being Daly commenced against the Inhabitants of this as well as many other parts of this Commonwelth who have Sufficient property to Discharge their Depts Ware it to be Receid in payment for the same but as the Situation of our affairs are at Presant our property is torn from us."  (In other words, legislators wouldn’t accept land as payment for taxes, preferring instead to steal the land through seizures, making it available at auction for a tiny fraction of its real value, so as to be bought up by themselves and their friends�"the few who actually had access to money.)

Another read: “What have We to Live on: No money to be had: our Estates dayly polled [taxed] and sold…What can your honours Ask of us unless A paper Currancy or some other meadium be provided so that we may pay our taxes and Debts.”

And another: “Shall the man, who has sauntered at home during the war, enjoying the smiles of fortune: wallowing in affluence, and fattening in the sunshine of ease and prosperity �" and shall I be taxed with my little farm to make them good in the hands of the present holders, who are mostly men of this description: forbid it humanity: forbid it gratitude and justice”

The circuit judges, accompanied by speculators, came quarterly, at specified times.  The judge oversaw tax collections and issued writs of seizure and foreclosure on those who could not pay.  The foreclosed properties and seized crops and animals were immediately bought at auction by the wealthy eastern speculators for far less than they were worth.  Farmers, seeing their livestock sold for mere pittances and neighbors being thrown into debtors’ prison, began organizing.

This is where Daniel Shays entered the picture.  With Shays’ appearance, the protests took on a more peaceful air.  Though armed, they never fired.  They crowded around the courthouse, blocking the judges’ entrance in order to prevent foreclosures. The public demonstrations came to be known as “Shays Rebellion”, though Daniel Shays, a war veteran for whom it is named, wasn’t the leader.  If there had been an effective leader willing to use violence, it is likely that the Massachusetts government would have fallen and been replaced with a more democratic system of government�"perhaps even a two-state solution.

When the General Court went into recess without considering the many petitions for relief, and the governor accused the protesters of sedition, the situation grew worse.  For Governor Bowdoin, the actions of the protesters demanded immediate military response.  The Governor called out the local militia.  The militia refused to stand.  Those few who did refused to fight.  

Meanwhile, General Knox, the Secretary of War, just happened to be in Massachusetts inspecting the federal armory in Springfield.  Learning about what was going on, (probably by reading wild stories in the newspapers that were from news outlets owned by the wealthy few), he was alarmed at the possibility of the people becoming angry enough to attack the federal armory and (Heaven forbid!) take over the Massachusetts government in order to cancel out all of the debts.  He quickly went to Boston to converse with Governor Bowdoin and hatch a plan before returning to New York, then the seat of the Continental Congress.

By now, the protesters had already organized and established democratically elected committees.  They called themselves “Regulators” after the then-well-known “War of the Regulators” of North and South Carolina.  Massachusetts wasn’t the only state where such things were happening. The poor in the Carolinas’ rural regions had been similarly abused by wealthy merchants in the eastern cities.  In what is also referred to as “The Peasant Uprising”, the Carolinian Regulators called the wealthy officials cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical, and corrupt.  They also surrounded courthouses to stop judges from issuing foreclosures.

Whether worried that the protests might spread eastward, or whether to scare or assure Boston’s merchants and bankers, the governor instituted Marshall Law.  Nearby militias were posted to patrol the streets of Boston.  

The General Court passed The Riot Act that waived habeas corpus.  It stipulated that sheriffs, constables and justices of the peace "shall be indemnified and held guiltless" if they killed those who did not disband. It also provided that the rioters would "forfeit all their lands", be whipped, and imprisoned for up to one year.

Daniel Gray, a wealthy businessman himself, (and more likely the actual leader of Shays Rebellion) understanding the plight of his neighbors, wrote his observations of the growing civil unrest and addressed the causes:  “The monies raised by impost and excise [are] being appropriated to discharge the interest of governmental securities, and not the foreign debt, when these securities are not subject to taxation” .  He opined that the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus combined with the unlimited power granted to the law’s enforcers were serving those that are “wholly actuated from a principle of revenge, hatred, and envy”.  

In New York, Knox was deeply troubled.  He met with the Congress.  He was certain, and he convinced Congress to agree, that Massachusetts and the entire confederacy was about to be overthrown by insurgents who didn’t want to pay taxes.  He noted similar dissent being heard throughout the nation.  Congress, hearing his alarm, and having heard other similar stories, agreed to borrow $500,000.00 to buy gold to pay a militia.   The gold was to be used to pay the soldiers because, as Knox told Congress, they would want to see it after having been treated so shabbily during and after the war.  Some soldiers were still waiting for back pay.  If gold was not present, Knox said, the soldiers might defect to the other side.  

To keep plans secret, Congress used a problem with Indians it was simultaneously mistreating.  That would serve as a cover for the call to arms.  

The subterfuge was so patently obvious that the secret wasn’t a secret. One letter from Major North said, “The people here smell a rat, that the troops about to be raised are more for the Insurgents than the Indians.”

Colonel Swan wrote to Knox “Being in Town at Concert, I am agreeably saluted with the news of War being declared against the Indians.  I hope in this declaration ‘Indians’�"is meant all who opposed the Dignity honor, and happiness of the United States, or of eithr of the States.”

None of this deterred the protesters.  It only strengthened their resolve.  At one of their gatherings, a farmer, Plough Jogger, expressed his frustration this way:  "I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war, been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates and all rates ... been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth ... The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers."

In the midst of all this, one Samuel Ely appeared on the scene.  Ely, a graduate of Yale, had briefly (very briefly) served as a minister in Somers, Connecticut.  There he preached the radical and unholy idea that the poor are closer to God than the rich.  He was probably using the teachings of Jesus that include, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”  or perhaps, “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God”  when he was indignantly fired by an outraged congregation.

He wandered into western Massachusetts where he became an itinerant traveling preacher, always championing the rights of the poor.  After the war, he settled in Northampton where he joined in a court-closing, at which time Ely is alleged to have shouted, “Come on my brave boys, we will go to the wood pile and get clubs enough and knock their grey wigs off and send them out of the world in an instant.”  He was arrested, fined 50 pounds (which for Ely, would have constituted a life sentence), and jailed in Springfield.

This only made matters worse.  Passions were stirred. Men marched to Springfield.  There they sprang Ely and several debtors from jail before fleeing.  The sheriff found them and demanded either Ely or hostages to serve in his place until Ely was brought forth.  The farmers complied and handed over three hostages.  The next day, six hundred men marched on Northampton to spring the hostages.  

Back in New York, Knox was having problems putting his plan into effect.  He couldn’t find trained soldiers who were willing to take up arms against the rebels.  There was too much sympathy for their cause.  They understood the meaning of betrayal.  Even the promise of real gold wouldn’t sway them.

News of the Shays Rebellion appeared in newspapers throughout the land.  This inspired more of the rural areas to do the same thing.  New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York soon had their own “insurrections”.  

Horrified by both the wild gossip and alarming news stories from the Boston newspaper saying that these protests had turned to organized attempts to thwart and even overthrow his government , Governor Bowdoin again asked Knox for troops.

Knox backed away from his promise of troops.  In a letter to George Washington about the rebellions, he said, “The Source of the Evil is the Nature of the Government”.  

As Congress discussed the situation, James Madison offered a way to back off from its promise of help while at the same time distancing itself from the corrupt Massachusetts government.  He said that the Articles of Confederation didn’t specifically give Congress the right to send troops into any of the sovereign nations to quell insurrection.  Congress speedily agreed and changed its mind about funding a militia.

Of course, a reading of the Articles of Confederation makes it very clear that militia could be sent into any member nation that was under attack “on Account of Religion, Sovereignty, Trade, or any other Pretence whatever.”  Now knowing that the source of the insurrections was the wealthy and corrupt Massachusetts government, they were no longer willing to interfere.  They let the people who were being harmed fend for themselves.

Congress couldn’t politically afford to get involved.  Nor did it dare accuse the wealthy by denouncing the tyranny.   It needed those same wealthy merchants to make loans to the government, as well as pay the federal government its taxes.  Those taxes were used to fund its own expenses as well as repay the war debt in order to protect the new nations’ credit.  Congress’ best course of action appears to have been to make itself as invisible as possible so that if it ever became necessary, it could portray Governor Bowdoin as a rogue thug.

The stories about Shays Rebellion spread into the most rarefied of circles.  The elite saw their own wealth, power, and God-given governing authority being questioned for the very first time in their lives.   

The perceived division between nature’s visibly obvious preference for the educated and the wealthy had been part of the worldview of the elite for more than 1,000 years, since the days of the Holy Roman Empire when the pope conferred special status on kings, thus God conferred that special status.  It wasn’t until the Magna Carta that others demanded their own divine right of superiority.  This right of superiority was accepted as real rather than artificial.  It simply never occurred to them that education permitted them to know more than the uneducated.   And it would not occur to them that one’s wealth was possible only because of theft.  Even John Adams feared equality, saying in a letter to James Sullivan, “It tends to confound and destroy all Distinctions, and prostrate all Ranks, to one common Levell.”  

With this mind-set firmly in place, they, the Nationalists, recognized a mutiny in the making.  They perceived the possibility of equality if these people ever gained control of the government, and THAT was perhaps the ugliest thought possible.  A passionate hatred of the poor and middle class as well as horror whenever they heard the words “freedom” or “equality” enflamed the passions of the aristocrats.  When the federal government refused to send troops to defend their beloved class system, they were afraid.  They were very, very afraid.

Desperate to hold onto his failing power using whatever force was necessary, Governor Bowdoin, using the cloak of secrecy, and not using any official government channel, commissioned his own personal illegal, army.  Funds were privately solicited from his wealthy friends.  More than 6,000 pounds were quickly raised from more than 125 eastern merchants.

Bowdoin assigned General Lincoln the task of raising the army.  The mercenaries he recruited were almost entirely from the most eastern counties of Massachusetts. The young recruits weren’t veterans and had no training.  Many didn’t even own a weapon.  Veterans, remembering their betrayal and seeing another in action, were still unwilling to participate.

Right before the final standoff, the senate published a lengthy “Address from the General Court to the People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts”.   It claims that it is from the General Court, but it is signed by a committee of senators who were by now much hated because they created the problem.  It addressed the “insurrections” in a way that is a mixture of an explanation of government finances that too many were saying shouldn’t be kept secret, a strange explanation of why everything was the peoples’ fault, and a subtle hint that troops were on their way, while defaming those veterans and other militia who would not join in support of their very own government that exists to benefit THEM with all the beneficence that humankind is capable of having.

The Address said the insurrections are the work “of evil and designing men that alienate the affections of the people in general”.

It condemned the idea of debt relief, calling it "dishonorable" to the Commonwealth and "injurious" to the people themselves.

The Address blamed the people for the hyperinflation that prevented their government from now accepting any less than seventy-five of the folding currencies for every one it originally issued.  It did not acknowledge that the farmers had no money, paper or otherwise.  Nor did it mention how it granted the wealthy cronies the right to pay their taxes in the worthless scraps of paper that had been accepted by the government at face value.

As to the request for even more paper currency, they said the idea was preposterous, because as seen by the current currency problem, it is the nature of paper money to naturally deflate.  Widows and children, the simple and the innocent will be most abused by it.  As these people are the special charge of the Supreme Being, it is a duty to prevent that.

As to questions of why the debt wasn’t revalued when the money was or that the inflation deflates the value of the debt of the wealthy while making the poor poorer, it simply reminded the people of their moral duty to pay their just debts.

As to the petitions to move the seat of government to a more central location to make it possible for representatives to attend, it said “Boston has long been thought the most convenient place: some of the General Court have supported otherwise, but the major part were against.”  Then, apparently not seeing any contradiction between what was just written and the next sentence, it derides the 90% of the nation that is refusing to send representatives to Boston.

As to why so few will send representatives, the senators said they didn’t believe the repugnant lies about the senate’s alleged abuses.  They claimed innocence.  Not only were they never aware of those charges, but they humbly serve the citizens of the state.

“You elected your representatives”, the Address continues without bothering to note the absence of those districts that do not have enough money saved to pay for a single night’s stay in Boston (even if expenses would be reimbursed later), only to be frustrated by a corrupt senate.

It addressed the many petitions to remove the current senators and replace them with people from county seats, thus allowing for fair and local representation.  To this, the senators explained in a condescending tone, it won’t fix anything and will just make things more expensive.

It does admit to the nature of the underlying problem, but rather than place the blame squarely where it belongs�"on themselves�"it blames the commoners equally, and accuses them of doing the same things that the senators, Governor Bowdoin, and their wealthy cronies were doing:  “We feel in common with our neighbors the scarcity of money; but is not this scarcity owing to our own folly?  …immense sums have been expended, for what is of no value, for the gewgaws imported from Europe, and the more pernicious produce of the West-Indies [Rum and sugar].  … the habits of luxury have exceedingly increased.  

“At the close of the war, we greedily adopted the luxurious modes of foreign nations.  Although our country [Massachusetts] abounds with all other necessares of life, the importations from abroad, for our own consumption, have been almost beyond calculation; we have indulged ourselvs in fantastical and expensive fashions and intemporate living; by these means, our property has been lessened and immense sums in specie (gold or silver coin) has been exported. … As the difficulty in paying debts increased, a disregard to honesty, justice and good faith, in public and private transactions become more manifest”.

While lauding their own beneficence and blaming the commoners for “their” envy of wealth that they insist is the root of the problem, they brought up the potential wrath of God.  “In a Commonwealth, where a spirit of unreasonable jealousy and a complaining temper, are indulged and countenanced, it will be impossible to give satisfaction to the people: if Angels in such case were to govern us, opposition would be made to their administration; indeed we have a striking instance that when such humors prevail, even the authority of the Supreme Being will be thought a grievance.  They then compared the people to the people of Israel, “who after having been delivered from their oppressors, led through the sea, rained on with the corn of heaven, and received meat to the full, the people complained and wantonly provoked his anger. …God forbid!  That like them, we should requite him with murmuring and ingratitude, and provok him to destroy us.”

Again attacking the commoners for the aristocrats’ own selfish misdeeds, the senators accused the farmers of making a "distinction between the government and the people, as though their interests were different and even opposite”.   

Bringing up the sins of those they falsely accuse, they call on ministers of religion to “inculcate upon the minds of their people, the principles of justice and public virtue; that they earnestly endeavor to impress them with sentiments of reverence to the Deity and benevolence to men, and convince them of the ruinous effects of luxury and licentiousness… to inform the ignorant…and that they use their utmost efforts to suppress the insurrections of such lawless and violent men, as may wish to pull down the fabric of law and government, and level it with the dust.”

Finally, in what is an almost imperceptible acknowledgment of guilt, it ends with chastising the militia that will not stand in their defense, comparing them to a man whose house caught fire, and who does nothing to put the fire out, consoling himself with the thought that he didn’t start the fire.

The Address shows just how serious Massachusetts’ situation was.  It was bankrupt.  By its own admission, it did NOT have the governing consent of at least 90% of eligible voters that were already a tiny minority of the population.  The only way to keep the nation from breaking up into county-sized governments, or the two states that the people wanted, was to use military might to force the people to consent to being governed by them again.

Around this time, General Lincoln’s illegal army was preparing to head west.  The Regulators, having learned when Bowdoin’s army would be on its way, prepared to head for the federal armory in Springfield.  

There is question about whether or not the Regulators were going to prevent the illegal army from gaining access to the armory, or if they intended to take it over.  There had been some threats by individuals.  Some heard the words and took them as bravado or rallying words by one or two�"like Ely�"angrily yelled out during the public protests at the courthouses.  Others, like Governor Bowdoin, took them seriously.  Boston’s wealthy merchants were alarmed.  As word spread, every wealthy person in the Americas was horrified.  This wasn’t a rebellion about taxes.  It was class warfare!  The natural and superior rights of the aristocracy that were sold to the people as God-given rights was an indea being rejected.  Such attacks could never be tolerated and must be silenced quickly!  Ideas about equality could become infectious.

One of Shays’ couriers was intercepted which is how General Lincoln learned of the anticipated date of Shays’ arrival.  Lincoln changed his plans in order to arrive earlier than the rebels.  By the time the Regulators arrived, Lincoln and his troops had already taken illegal possession of the armory.  Because many of his young recruits didn’t have muskets, Lincoln broke into the armory and armed them.  He also removed a cannon.  

This was done despite the fact that the armory was federal property, not state property, and that the private militia was not sanctioned by either the State or the Federal government.  It was an illegal army.  It was the Governor, General Lincoln, and the merchants who broke ALL the laws in Springfield on that cold, wintry day.

In all protests where Shays participated, not a single shot had been fired or courthouse burned.  At the armory, as the Regulators approached, General Lincoln ordered them to stop, but he was ignored.  Still not taking aim in spite of the cannon and muskets pointing at them, the Regulators kept approaching.  Lincoln ordered his men to fire a cannon filled with grape-shot at the approaching men who were still not taking aim.  When the cannon fired, no Regulator fired back.  They fled.  Some Regulators died.  Many were wounded.  

The Regulators didn’t flee purely out of fear.  These were experienced war veterans.  Several had been officers.  Though the men were armed, they had never used the weapons in their protests.  On the other hand, Lincoln’s militia had no army experience.  All were young.  Many of them didn’t even own a musket, let alone have the proper clothing or shoes to be in such a frigid climate (relative to Boston) in January.  Compared to the Regulators, they were exhausted, freezing, and ill-prepared to fight.  They could have easily been outdone, cannon or no cannon.

Had the Regulators been willing to use violence rather than their voices in public protest, or had they believed that they would be fired upon when they weren’t even taking aim, it’s possible that history would look very different today.  Recorded accounts of the scene make it appear that the Regulators were intending to defend the armory from the illegal army that would be used against them.  Being armed themselves, they didn’t need the contents.

The Regulators were rounded up.  Many of the “traitors” and “seditionists” were sentenced to death by hanging.  Because of pronounced support for the Regulators, the hangings stopped at two, but woe to the families of those two.

The few remaining legislators who made up the Massachusetts General Court authorized after-the-fact payment for the militia in order to reimburse those who funded the illegal army that defended their right to govern without the consent of the governed.  This new expense was, of course, passed on to the people.

Governor Bowdoin, General Lincoln, and the 125 wealthy merchants who put together an illegal army of paid hit men, who violated habeas corpus while they murdered the victims of their own greed-motivated tyranny, were never charged with any crime.  The federal government remained silent about the illegal army breaking into its armory and stealing its weapons to unlawfully attack and kill civilians who had not raised guns at anyone and upon whom great abuses were inflicted.  

Though the legislature of 1786 had levied a hard-money tax of more than 40,000 pounds, it was only able to come up with 93.  Massachusetts was bankrupt and could not meet its obligations to the Continental Congress.

That wasn’t the end of the story however.  At the next election, the people were so furious at the government’s behaviors that they ousted the governor and three quarters of the legislature.  The change in the political winds wasn’t just in Massachusetts.  Anger had spread.  After a new election ousting their corrupt government, the Rhode Island legislature went so far as to force its merchant elites to accept the worthless paper currency at face value.   The impact of this was not lost on the wealthy who saw the institution of the aristocracy being threatened, even though there was already a plot in place to create a permanent class system mirroring that of England.

Somehow, the entire episode became known as “The Shays Rebellion” rather than the “The Great Tyranny”.  Being misnamed, it was much easier to justify the establishment of a new central government where federal troops could not refuse to stand without disciplinary action exacting a toll.  The elite had learned that they could no longer depend on the militias for the defense of their wealth and God-given superiority.  They needed a strong central government with REAL power.

The more informed story of the Shays rebellions tells a very different tale than the one taught in public schools. The story that a group of disgruntled taxpayers attacking an armory, causing everyone to see how a strong national government was needed, simply makes no sense to those who know the details.

A current high school level lesson plan  reads:  “This series of lessons centers on the reasons that angry rebel independent farmers in New England, led by Revolutionary War hero Daniel Shays, caused a crisis in the Massachusetts state government; a crisis that the national Confederation government seemed powerless to resolve. Many ordinary Americans, hearing of the rebellion, worried that their recently won freedoms would be compromised unless the central government could restore order and respect for the law. National leaders such as James Madison, Samuel Adams and George Washington feared the worst. If such an uprising against a state government could not be put down effectively, could the United States survive as a nation? What was to be done?”

Look at the number of lies in this one paragraph from a lesson plan:

 Daniel Shays was not the leader.
 He was a protester, not a rebel.  He never fired a shot.  
 It is more likely that he tried to protect the armory, not raid it.  The Regulators were already armed and did not need the munitions.
 The Regulators did not cause the crisis.  The wealthy merchants and financiers in the corrupt self-proclaimed government of Massachusetts did by imposing taxes on the farmers that required western residents to pay more gold than existed in the entire state of Massachusetts �" while the wealthy merchants and aristocrats paid their taxes using worthless and untaxed scraps of paper.
 Massachusetts was not a State as we think of it today.  It was a nation.
 The Confederate government was not powerless to resolve it when the nearby militias refused to stand.  It had the authority, as the Articles of Confederation clearly show.  Funds were authorized.  They couldn’t find troops to defend the government.  The confederation chose to distance itself when the truth of what happened became known and when popular opinion sided with the Regulators, as the spread of the movement shows.  
 The lesson plan says that many ordinary Americans worried that their new freedoms would be compromised, but that too is a lie.  The vast majority were more worried about their massive loss of freedom, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the Riot Acts that prohibited speech critical of government.  Only the extreme minority of wealthy Nationalists worried about loss of freedoms.  
 If people were not wealthy, they had no increased freedom after the war.  In fact, because of the burgeoning tax load and hyperinflation, they had far less freedom under the tyrannical aristocratic government.  The Massachusetts Constitution even increased the wealthholds for voters, meaning that fewer had the freedom to vote.  Increased taxes took away freedoms.  The myth of newfound freedoms is just that�"a myth�"an intentional and outright lie.  
 Only the wealthy looked on in horror and “feared the worst”.   It was the wealthy who wanted a standing national army that would defend them if the militia ever again refused to stand. With an army, if a drafted soldier refused to fight, as the militia did, he could be charged with treason or desertion, which would cost him his life.
 As to the three historical figures mentioned, James Madison was initially alarmed after reading one-sided newspaper accounts that were intended to raise alarm.  He successfully headed the effort to fund troops to put down the insurrection.  When he learned about what was really happening in New England (and elsewhere), and when he learned that trained militias were unwilling to fight, he backed off, justifying it by using a lie about the actual wording of the Articles of Confederation that reads: “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.”  In fact, the confederation had a RESPONSIBILITY to send troops, if they could have found any.
 George Washington was indeed alarmed upon reading accounts in sensationalized newspaper stories, but when he learned the truth, his anger was directed at the Massachusetts government.  It was threatening the institution of his beloved aristocracy.  He was furious at the Massachusetts government.
 It is true that Samuel Adams led the push to establish the Riot Acts that took away the right to publicly criticize government, eliminated habeas corpus which allowed protesters to be shot and killed without a trial.  That only goes to show the depravity of the beloved Samuel Adams.  But popular resentment of these laws was as great as the resentment of President John Adams’ “Alien and Sedition Acts” would be when he was president.  In fact, resentment was so great that in the next Massachusetts election, John Hancock became governor and a more balanced congress came to power, as happened in other states where similar things were occurring.   
 The more interesting story, and more frightening story for the wealthy, who were the only ones able to afford newspaper companies thus control content, was in Rhode Island.  But if that story made its way into popular myth we were given as history, there would be no way to hide the true moral of the story.  For those of us schooled in public schools, the story began and ended in Massachusetts.

The difference between the documented truth and the Orwellian truth entrusted to the American memory should be disturbing to you.  Shays Rebellion is a story about abuse and violence used to exert power and control over a carefully selected target.  It shows us how corrupt government legislators create misery, then feed off (capitalize on) that misery in exchange for profits.  

What is the purpose of teaching myths as history rather than facts?  The purpose is to control you.  It sets up a story line where you believe that one set of rules exists, but in truth, another very different and much darker one is at play; one that you are not supposed to know about.  It is this that leaves the American people paralyzed and uncertain about what to do even though they know that “something” is fundamentally wrong and America is on the wrong track.

If you have ever asked yourself why battered women stay in violent relationships, the answer to that is the same as the answer to those who ask why Americans passively stand by as their own lives are put into greater and greater danger by their own government.  They cannot conceive of how to remain safe while fixing the problem.  In such unequal power contests, it seems more dangerous to leave than to stay.

Lying is a particularly vicious form of intellectual and emotional abuse.  Lies, be they of omission or commission, necessarily distort the perceptions of those who believe them.  They cause those who innocently believe the lie to take actions that they wouldn’t consider taking if they knew the truth.  It is a despicable method of manipulation that convinces you to beg for that which you don’t want.

 Chapter 14 A
The Truth shall set you free



We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson


Our founding national documents are so treasured, they are carefully guarded and protected in the National Archives.  You can see the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights in the National Archives Building at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington DC.  The documents are so precious that they are displayed in sealed cases made of thick glass and titanium.  They are stored deep underground when not on display. To protect them, the cases contain argon gas and are kept at sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit with a relative humidity of forty percent.  The building itself is a magnificent monument built in their honor.

As you enter the building, the first thing you notice is the hushed silence in spite of the number of people in the room.  When people speak, they speak in murmurs and whispers.  Only the sound of shoes squeaking or canes clacking against the marble floor before echoing throughout the rotunda, disturb the peace.  A palpable sense of reverence (emotion), humility (emotion), and patriotism (emotion) pervades the atmosphere.  

This is rather odd for a nation that is no longer governed by that Constitution or the Bill of Rights, and that long ago rejected even the most basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.  To walk into the rotunda with understanding of the actual history of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence is to experience peak cognitive dissonance.   The mind fills with questions about how we could revere that which we so proudly disavow in the name of patriotism.

How could we be doing that without our knowing it?  Once the question is actually recognized as an answerable question, answers begin presenting themselves.

If, while searching for the answers to that question, you were to go back, step by step, all the way back through the various letters, speeches, available minutes and notes about various conventions and meetings by America’s luminaries before, during, and in the early days of America’s national government, something very striking begins to emerge.  At the root of every problem that America has today, one name appears in every single original instance of putrid corruption.

It’s hard to imagine such darkness dwelling in the heart of a single American let alone human being, yet there was such a man.  His influence is still so pervasive that since the United States became a global power, that menacing influence has infected minds around the globe with its sickness.  That he had a brilliant mind is indisputable.  How he used that mind was nothing short of pathologically sinister.    

That man’s name is Alexander Hamilton.  We call him a “founding father”.  We should be calling him “The Great Deceiver”, for it is a rare human specimen who can achieve such depths of darkness.  

Hamilton was the father, architect, and instigator of the dissolution of the American Constitutional Republic.  We have been taught to revere him for his many gifts to our country, even though we are oblivious to the extent of what those gifts actually are.  We can thank him for:

~ Loss of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and
 Declaration of Independence ~
~ Corrupt government ~ The military-industrial complex ~
~Two ever-warring political parties ~
~Fractional reserve banking: debt-funded currency~
~ Bail outs ~
~ Corporations are persons ~  Corrupt and unconstitutional Supreme Court ~
~Hidden income taxes ~ Distraction and lies as political weapons ~
~Spying on American citizens ~
~ Implied powers ~
~ Corporate welfare ~
~ Using/instigating wars/insurrections for political purposes ~
~ Legal government bribery of elected officials for political gain ~
~ The merging of Christianity and the once-secular State ~
~ Hunger in a land where greed is openly served by government ~
~ Government lying to the people for political purposes ~
~ Unethical use of personal property seizure laws ~
~ Using government power to regulate what we may
eat/drink/smoke/grow/make and choices of employment ~
~Executive privilege to protect office holders from releasing damning information in response to legislative subpoenas ~
~ Use of the IRS/legislation to attack citizen-enemies economically  ~
~ Unrestrained greed by the few ~
~ Your serfdom ~  

In addition to the above, many other social ills were generated in the wake of Hamilton’s policies.  As we put together our list of gratitudes for all he gave America, we can thank him for the indirect establishment of a culture filled with overflowing prisons, inexcusable and growing poverty, human garbage dumps that we call our inner cities, an educational system that lies and uses half-truths about our own history, having turned schools into a subsidy that serves commercial and political interests, as well as ever-present wars that prop up an unsustainable financial system.  If it were possible, more reprehensible than that, he gave us the specific rules that have been followed closely, and that made George Orwell’s “1984” become our reality.   

Hamilton turned language into a weapon.  He specialized in lies, trickery, and double entendre.  He conducted America’s “first” mind-war that causes us to be living in a delusion where we call our fascism a democracy, where we celebrate our serfdom in the name of freedom, we defend our government-imposed ignorance in the name of national strength, and we desperately cling to the irrational belief that our continual wars are the only possible means of establishing peace.  Hamilton laid out the framework of our totalitarian state.

Nearly every American has fallen under his dark spell.  Americans admire him, thank him, and revere him in spite of the fact that he openly and consistently despised “the people” and was a self-professed enemy of liberty/freedom and equality.  He frequently called democracy and freedom the world’s greatest evils, followed only by farmers who were too self-sufficient to be turned into serfs without force because they did not require money.  He openly favored using government as a weapon that the wealthy should employ against those who are not of the aristocracy.  The people, he said, are no more than animals, easy to manipulate, and willing to believe a lie if it sounds better than truth.  Because they are driven by their passions (emotions), thus are lacking the ability to use intellectual reasoning, they can and should be put to good use, like any other beast of labor, for the self-serving purposes of the wealthy.

Fellow federalist, John Adams, said of him, “Hamilton I know to be a proud-spirited, conceited, aspiring mortal always pretending to morality, with as debauched morals as …anyone I know.  As great a hypocrite as any in the U.S.  His intrigues (depraved scheming) in the election I despise.  That he has ‘talents’ I admit…”    In a letter to his wife, Abigail, Adams called him "The b*****d brat of a Scottish peddler. A man devoid of every principle” referring to him as a “Libertine”   who had “corrupted his age by serving those whose only end was the accumulation of wealth” .  Hamilton was so driven by ambition and vanity, many believed that he would do anything to anyone�"man, woman, or child�"if it would give him the power and fame he was seeking as he sought to become the new Caesar.

Abigail Adams liked him even less.  She wrote “Beware that spare Cassius, has always occurred to me when I have seen that c**k sparrow.  O, I have read his heart in his wicked eyes many a time.  They very devil is in them.  They are lasciviousness itself.” And. “That man would in my mind become a second Buonaparty if he was possessed of equal power”.

As to Jefferson, the enmity between them was well known.  In a letter to Benjamin Rush (1811), he commented on a conversion he witnessed between Hamilton and John Adams about the merits of the British government.  “Mr. Adams giving it as his opinion that if some of its defects and abuses were corrected, it would be the most perfect constitution of government ever devised by man.  Hamilton, on the contrary, asserted, that with its exiting vices, it was the most perfect model of government that could be formed; and that the correction of its vices would render it an impracticable government. … Another incident took place on the same occasion, which will further delineate Mr. Hamilton’s political principles.  The room being hung around with a collection of the portraits of remarkable men, among them were those of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, Hamilton asked me who they were.  I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced, naming them.  He paused for some time: the greatest man, said he, that ever lived, was Julius Caesar.” Jefferson continued by saying that “as a politician, Hamilton believed in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.”  

In a letter to George Washington, Hamilton describes himself when he says, “When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits�"despotic in his ordinary demeanour�"known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty�"when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity�"to join in the cry of danger to liberty�"to take every opportunity of embarrassing the general government & bringing it under suspicion�"to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day�"It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.

“It has aptly been observed that Cato was the Tory�"Caesar the Whig of his day. The former frequently resisted�"the latter always flattered the follies of the people. Yet the former perished with the Republic; the latter destroyed it.  .

That is the pattern that you will see over and over again throughout the real American history that you were not taught.  Remember those words as you read Hamilton’s writings.

That is Alexander Hamilton’s self-assessment and view of the world. That is the man that this country holds up with the deepest respect and admiration.  From the very beginnings of his involvement in politics, Hamilton had a plan.

Hamilton hated any form of government that limited his fierce ambition, and it was his driving purpose to destroy any enemies of his plan using whatever methods would work.  His hero was Julius Caesar.  Caesar, born in modest circumstances, used military accomplishments to rise to the highest levels of the Republican Roman semi-democratic government, that he then crushed, establishing himself as dictator.  Hamilton closely followed Caesar’s maxims, including: “If you must break the law, do it to seize power. In all other cases observe it."  And “Men willingly believe what they wish to be true.”   These two principles, combined with an absolute absence of empathy and ethics, would lead him to destroy everything that Americans today believe is sacred and securely in place, because they want to believe that the false history they have been fed is true.

Hamilton would say or do whatever he needed to say or do to accomplish his chosen end.  He was passionately for things in one instance while vehemently against the same things in another, and sometimes in the same letter.  That is typical Hamilton.

The War of Independence hadn’t even begun when Hamilton was working hard to foment a war that only a few wanted to see.  For most Americans, things weren’t very difficult under the crown before the Declaration of Independence.  The minimal tea controversy that spawned the Boston Tea Party only affected the wealthy in the cities who did not grow teas and herbs on their own property.  As the typical colonists (excluding aristocracy) were agrarian, all would have grown herbs and made their own teas.  But with the passage of the Tea Act, Hamilton saw his opportunity to stir up the whirlwinds to instigate an unpopular war.  In it and in retrospect, he shows his true colors.  In an editorial responding to an anonymous editorial, he wrote:

“I love to speak the truth, and would scorn to prejudice you in favor of what I have to say, by taking upon me a fictitious character, as other people have done.”  (This is so typical of Hamilton’s lies.  He is well known for his many anonymous writings under various pseudonyms.  Among other instances, all his writings in the Federalist Papers are under pseudonyms, as are his letters inciting anger over the Whiskey Rebellions, for starters.) “I can venture to assure you the true writer of the piece signed A. W. Farmer, is not in reality a Farmer. He is some ministerial emissary, that has assumed the name to deceive you, and make you swallow the intoxicating potion he has prepared for you. But I have a better opinion of you than to think he will be able to succeed. I am persuaded you love yourselves and children better than to let any designing men cheat you out of your liberty and property, to serve their own purposes.” (Which is what Hamilton is now doing.  Remember that Hamilton used flattery as a weapon.)  “You would be a disgrace to your ancestors, and the bitterest enemies to yourselves, and to your posterity, if you did not act like men, in protecting and defending those rights you have hitherto enjoyed.”

A paragraph later, he repeats:  “I despise all false pretensions and mean arts.”  He then proceeds to use the mean arts to terrify his readers by having them envision the lengths to which Parliament might possibly decide to go if they agreed to pay, what he conceded, was the insignificant 3 pence tax.   

“You have heretofore experienced the benefit of being taxed by your own Assemblies only. Your burdens are so light that you scarcely feel them. You’d soon find the difference, if you were once to let the Parliament have the management of these matters.

“How would you like to pay four shillings a year, 1 out of every pound your farms are worth, to be squandered (at least a great part of it) upon ministerial tools and court sycophants? What would you think of giving a tenth part of the yearly products of your lands to the clergy? Would you not think it very hard to pay ten shillings sterling, per annum, for every wheel of your wagons and other carriages; a shilling or two for every pane of glass in your houses; and two or three shillings for every one of your hearths? I might mention taxes upon your mares, cows, and many other things; but those I have already mentioned are sufficient. Methinks I see you stare, and hear you ask, how you could live, if you were to pay such heavy taxes. Indeed, my friends, I can’t tell you. You are to look out for that, and take care you do not run yourselves in the way of danger, by following the advice of those who want to betray you.” (Which is exactly the plan Hamilton has in mind.) This you may depend upon: if ever you let the Parliament carry its point, you will have these and more to pay. Perhaps, before long, your tables, and chairs, and platters, and dishes, and knives, and forks, and every thing else, would be taxed. Nay, I don’t know but they would find means to tax you for every child you got, and for every kiss your daughters received from their sweet-hearts; and, God knows, that would soon ruin you. The people of England would pull down the Parliament House, if their present heavy burdens were not transferred from them to you. Indeed, there is no reason to think the Parliament would have any inclination to spare you. The contrary is evident.

“But being ruined by taxes is not the worst you have to fear. What security would you have for your lives? How can any of you be sure you would have the free enjoyment of your religion long? Would you put your religion in the power of any set of men living? Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.”

This is Hamilton’s style.  Appeal to the most wretched of emotions by evoking fear, paint a picture of something that has never happened and likely never would, and invoke the possibility of the wrath of a God that he didn’t personally believe in.  Never appeal to intellect unless it is with a lie because people will believe what they want to believe.

For a sociopath like Hamilton, it is strange that so many still think he was a Christian.   That he often referred to God is obvious.  That he believed in Him is a myth.   He wrote “The world has been scourged with many fanatical sects in religion who, inflamed by sincere but mistaken zeal, have perpetuated under the idea of serving God the most atrocious crimes".  Though he didn’t like religions and didn’t attend church, he thought that it was important to use religion as the Holy Roman Empire did: to control the masses.  It was part of his plan.

Hamilton’s attitude towards religion was wholly exploitative. To him religion was a thought-system, a socio-political concept, rather than a personal relationship to God. There was no God other than the state and the state alone had total sovereignty.  It existed to serve and be served by its chosen few: the aristocracy.  For the unenlightened and anti-enlightenment Hamilton, morals were nothing more than biological emotional responses, which could be evoked at will by a skillful orator such as himself.  He believed that emotions were the God that the church foisted upon the ignorant, and he thought that America had every ability to become the next Roman Empire on a global scale if America could be redesigned in that model.  When he became its Caesar, he would be its God!

These fundamental beliefs are why Hamilton’s utopia had all power consolidated under a strong and merciless monarch.  In his mind, that was the only way to avoid anarchy.  Because emotions (he called passions) were what God really is, then religion is nothing more than a means for mobilizing and unifying public opinion.  Governments were needed to establish an unquestionable code of morality.  The Spanish Inquisitions were still ongoing and the witch trials were not that distant in our own past.  It was easy for him to see himself at the head of a new nation.  He was well educated.  He had been paying attention. And he knew how to control people�"with oratory, force, terror, and corruption.

Yet for all his fear mongering about the possibility of Parliament raising taxes, Hamilton loved high taxes.  They would be an essential part of his plan.

The war that came after the Declaration of Independence had hardly begun when Hamilton began putting his plan to be Caesar in motion.  He saw the opportunity when he became George Washington's chief of staff.

His relationship with Washington was a curious one.  Hamilton was obsequious and deferential even though he had absolutely no respect or affection for the man.  For him, Washington was a necessary conquest if he was to achieve the status of Caesar.  On the other hand, Washington loved him like a son and trusted him far more than he should have.

George Washington wasn’t the brightest candle in any chandelier.  He had about a third grade education and could barely write.  Jefferson said of him that he was a miserable failure of a general in the field though competent enough against a stationary enemy.  His hero status before the Revolutionary War was purely fictional, and offered by the Virginia governor as cover for some incredibly stupid mistakes, such as starting the French and Indian War, and creating a friendly fire incident that almost wiped out the entirety of his Virginia militia.  After the revolution, the intentional fabrications became legend as he became a symbol for patriotism and a reason to contribute to the war effort.  

Even Washington’s admirers�"those who liked him as a man�"recognized his lack of intelligence.   He was slow.

Jefferson, who truly did admire Washington for his services to the young country, said of Washington: “[His mind] was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.”  Jefferson continues while speaking about his military abilities:  “if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment.  In speaking of his intellect in general, he wrote: “his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words.  In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed.”

John Adams, his vice president, said of him: “That Washington was not a scholar is certain.  That he was too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation is equally beyond dispute.  He had derived little Knowledge from Reading, none from Travel”  

Adams described a conversation he had with Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, in which Pickering claimed that: “Washington often dozed in cabinet meetings, never read dispatches, wrote few, if any, of his own speeches, needed chalk marks on the floor to know where to stand at receptions and levees, and was, in general, an illiterate, intellectually incompetent cipher who was propped up in public by his staff.”  

“Washington”, he said on a different occasion, “got the reputation of being a great man because he kept his mouth shut”

Benjamin Rush, Treasurer of the U. S. Mint under Adams wrote, “I earnestly request that you destroy this letter as soon as you read it.  I do not wish it to be known that General W was deficient.”

Secretary of State Timothy Pickering wrote Adams when it appeared that Hamilton was blackmailing Washington,  and Adams was working very hard to quash the rumors.  Pickering asked:  [Favorable] “ideas of Washington are probably entertained by the world at large; for few men were acquainted with his real character, and of those few, a very small number . . . will venture, except perhaps in whispers, to speak what they thought or think of his talents.  T’was important to maintain, during the revolution, the popular opinion in his favor.  Accordingly, there was no public disclosure … But is it proper that the truth should forever be concealed?”

The reason this defamation of these two beloved characters is being brought up now is that it is impossible to make sense of what follows unless the readers understands how duplicitous Hamilton was, how mentally deficient Washington was, how mutually dependent they were as they pursued their individual ambitions, how they both loved flattery of any type, and how they both hated anyone or anything that might threaten their beloved institution of the aristocracy.

With General Washington not able to write a letter by himself because of his shortcomings, the brilliant Hamilton was an ideal aide de camp.  By all accounts, he was brilliant.  Both had a love for the military and especially Julius Caesar, which gave them something in common.   As Washington had no sons and Hamilton had no parents, Hamilton, in Washington’s mind, became the son he never had.  Washington, in Hamilton’s mind, became a tool.

Hamilton would write letters for Washington, which Washington would then laboriously copy in his own handwriting.  Hamilton also handled the many details that were beyond Washington’s meager abilities.

For the master manipulator Hamilton, though he had no respect for Washington, he was always deferential, flattering, and fawning in his presence.  He knew that Washington treated him like a son, and he intended to leverage that to become Washington’s heir apparent in the monarchy that he would work industriously to establish.  Washington, as has been said, loved the flattery and set his full trust in someone he didn’t know was his greatest enemy.   His misplaced trust would be this country’s downfall.

Hamilton immediately began using his position as aide de camp to General Washington to organize wealthy allies for his plan.  In a secret letter to Robert Morris, often referred to as America’s Financier, he wrote of his desire to destroy the existing Confederation and set up a new government created in the image of Great Britain.  His plan included a national bank that would unite and merge government interests with the interests of the well-monied in order to form a permanent and indestructible aristocracy.

He writes: “It has ever been my opinion that Congress ought to have complete sovereignty in all but the mere municipal law of each State; and I wish to see a convention of all the States, with full power to alter and amend, finally and irrevocably, the present futile and senseless Confederation.”

His letter begins with the need for secrecy:  “The channel of the public [news]papers, commonly made use of for the purpose [of discussion], appears to me exceptionable (inappropriate) on several accounts. It not only restrains a freedom of discussion, from the extreme delicacy of the subject, but [public] discussion itself increases the evil, by exposing our weak sides to the popular eye, and adding false terrors to those well-founded apprehensions which our situation authorizes.” (Underline added for emphasis.)

He then frames his plan.  “The game we play is a sure game, if we play it with skill.  …  A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing .  It will be a powerful cement of our Union.  It will also create a necessity for keeping up taxation to a degree which, without being oppressive, will be a spur to industry …  We labor less now than any civilized nation of Europe; and a habit of labor in the people is as essential to the health and vigor of their minds and bodies, as it is conducive to the welfare of the state.”  His use of the words “excessive” and “without being oppressive” will give way to truth later, when he actually puts his plan into action.

Here exposing freedom’s vulnerability, he writes: “The farmers have the game in their own hands, and will make it very difficult to lower the prices of their commodities. For want of laborers, there is no great superfluity (overabundance) of the most essential articles raised. These are things of absolute necessity, and must be purchased, as well by the other classes of society as by the public. The farmers, on the contrary, if they do not like the price, are not obliged to sell; because they have almost every necessary within themselves�"salt, and one or two more excepted, which bear a small proportion to what is wanted from them, and which they can obtain, by barter, for other articles equally indispensable.

“Heavy taxes, it may be said, will oblige them to sell”   

In fact, soon after, he began his campaign to raise taxes.  In a seldom heard of affair called the Newburgh Conspiracy, Hamilton’s involvement is unquestioned, though the details of what occurred are of some debate.  

The Newburgh Conspiracy came about as a result of several factors.  One is that the soldiers wanted their back pay.  The other is that a group of nationalist officers and the above-mentioned Morris, wanted to use the opportunity of war to destroy the sovereignty of the states and replace it with a single national government.  In that way, the national government would be wed with the military that would be wed to America’s financiers in an unbreakable bond (which is what America has today).  The time to do that was when the countries were involved in war.

Using anonymous letters that intentionally enflamed the passions (Hamilton’s style) the nationalist officers demanded pensions of half pay for life, which was pretty sweet for the officers who had been serving for less than six years.  It was also a hefty expense for the colonialists who were all struggling under the weight of the war.  The officers also wanted immediate back payment, and they threatened a military coup d’ état if Congress didn’t immediately honor their demands.  When Mr. Morris, who was a supporter of the dissolution of the Articles of Confederation, resigned, Congress panicked.  Sensing their fear, the nationalist officers pushed harder for their demands.

Washington spoke of one of the letters in his address that attempted to put down the revolution within the revolution that threatened to end the war in Britain’s favor on the same day that news reached his camp that a peace treaty was likely forthcoming.  He said, “By an anonymous summons, an attempt has been made to convene you together; how inconsistent with the rules of propriety! How unmilitary! and how subversive of all order and discipline, let the good sense of the Army decide.

“In the moment of this Summons, another anonymous production was sent into circulation, addressed more to the feelings and passions, than to the reason and judgment of the Army.” (Hamilton’s style) “The author of the piece, is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his Pen and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his Heart, for, as Men see thro’ different Optics, and are induced by the reflecting faculties of the Mind, to use different means, to attain the same end, the Author of the Address, should have had more charity, than to mark for Suspicion, the Man (speaking of himself) who should recommend moderation and longer forbearance, or, in other words, who should not think as he thinks, and act as he advises. But he had another plan in view, in which candor and liberality of Sentiment, regard to justice, and love of Country, have no part; and he was right, to insinuate the darkest suspicion, to effect the blackest designs.

“That the Address is drawn with great Art, and is designed to answer the most insidious purposes. That it is calculated to impress the Mind, with an idea of premeditated injustice in the Sovereign power of the United States, and rouse all those resentments which must unavoidably flow from such a belief. That the secret mover of this Scheme (whoever he may be) intended to take advantage of the passions, while they were warmed by the recollection of past distresses, without giving time for cool, deliberative thinking, and that composure of Mind which is so necessary to give dignity and stability to measures is rendered too obvious, by the mode of conducting the business, to need other proof than a reference to the proceeding.”

No one is absolutely certain who wrote the anonymous tracts or who the initial agitator was, but many fingers pointed to Hamilton, Washington’s own aide whom he loved as he would love a son.  It is also likely that Hamilton wrote Washington’s response to it.

Washington asked Hamilton for an explanation for why his name kept coming up as the instigator of the dastardly planned coup d’etat.   Here are excerpts from Hamilton’s response where Hamilton tells Washington that it wasn’t really a planned coup d’ état; but rather, a game to play congress using the army as its foil.  Not denying his involvement, he wrote:

“I thank your Excellency for the hints you are so obliging as to give me in your private letter. I do not wonder at the suspicions that have been infused; nor should I be surprised to hear that I have been pointed out as one of the persons concerned in playing the game described.”…

“There are two classes of men, sir, in Congress, of very different views: one attached to State, the other to Continental, politics.”  The former were called federalists (State sovereignty republicans) and the latter were called nationalists (all powerful central government advocates).  The federalists, Hamilton argued in his letter, were too powerful in Congress and something needed to be done to strip them of their power.   (The original Federalists wanted to do away with the aristocracy and establish true democracy.)

“The matter with respect to the army which has occasioned most altercation in Congress and most dissatisfaction in the army, has been the half-pay.  (The pensions for officers) The opinions on this head have been two: one party was for referring the several lines (of finance) to their States, to make such commutation as they should think proper; the other, for making the commutation by Congress, and funding it on Continental security. I was of this last opinion, and so were all those (lenders such as Mr. Morris) who will be represented as having made use of the army as puppets.

“Our principal reasons were: Firstly, by referring the lines (of finance) to their respective States, those which were opposed to the half-pay would have taken advantage of the officers’ necessities to make the commutation far short of an equivalent. Secondly, the inequality which would have arisen in the different States when the officers came to compare (as has happened in other cases), would have been a new source of discontent.” (Given that Massachusetts had the highest cost of living of all the new nations, this was a patent misrepresentation.  Because of slave labor, the southern states had a far lower cost of living, so his plan would punish the southern states and those States that had managed their economic policies more effectively, but as Washington, a slave owner, wasn’t too bright, he wasn’t able to see beyond his own belief systems.)  “Thirdly, such a reference was a continuance of the old wretched State system, by which the ties between Congress and the army have been nearly dissolved, by which the resources of the States have been diverted from the common treasury and wasted�"a system which your Excellency has often justly reprobated. …  (underline added for emphasis.  Hamilton wanted to get rid of militias and replace them with a standing army.)

“In this situation what was to be done? It was essential to our cause that vigorous efforts should be made to restore public credit; it was necessary to combine all the motives to this end that could operate upon different descriptions of persons in the different States; the necessities and discontents of the army presented themselves as a powerful engine. …

“The truth was, these people, in this instance, wanted to play off the army against the funding system.”

The purpose of this strike by the wealthy officers and the bankers would have put an end to the war, and we would have lost in spite of the cost of lives and fortunes directed, and in spite of a growing awareness that England was at the brink of admitting defeat.  If the wealthy could force the new nations into bankruptcy by demanding back pay and pre-payment of pensions for less than six years’ service, thus forcing the new nations to increase taxes inordinately (he was ever the lover of high taxes and the insurrections they brought), people would demand a strong national government to protect them from the new nations’ oppressions.  As Washington’s heir apparent, it was his path to becoming Caesar.

The actions resulted in Congress voting to fund their demands in a compromise deal.  These extra expenses were passed onto the member nations, who not-so- curiously, couldn’t find lenders that would allow them to borrow the necessary money.  The 1785 requisition that Hamilton demanded was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The 1785 requisition, notably overlooked by many history books, assessed taxes to pay for the unpopular demand.  Taxpayers took note of the fact that officers were to receive an immediate one-time payment of five years earnings in lieu of a pension, while still fighting the war, while the front-line enlisted men, who were mostly drafted farmers facing greater dangers, would not receive pensions until 1818�"and even then only if they could demonstrate poverty or were invalids.

The act ultimately caused havoc in the states.  Paying the new and overly-burdensome taxes was impossibile for some states, which is when the taxes were laid most heavily on the farmers that sparked the various Shays Rebellions.  Hamilton, who was trained as an accountant, knew that he could bankrupt the states and in this way force them to give up their sovereignty.  It was all part of his plan for a national government to assume states’ debts in exchange for the most meaningful part of their sovereignty.

That is when states began falling behind on payment of their debts, and why the farmers were required to pay taxes in non-existent gold.  Some states were unable to or refused to pay for the unfair 1785 requisition, and Hamilton used that as more fodder in his war to replace the Articles of Confederation with a national government with a monarch at its head.

We have been taught that a new American constitution was necessary because we needed a standing army to put down insurrections like the Shays Rebellions, and some of may also have been taught that some states were not paying their taxes.  But when you see that it was only the demand for pensions for nationalist officers in a power play that was initiated by Alexander Hamilton, and the open revolt that it caused in the colonies, where hundreds of men carrying muskets surrounded the court houses demanding tax relief, that the picture of Shays Rebellion comes more fully together.  Hamilton was the instigator of those rebellions.  He was riding the whirlwind and directing the storm.

His writings, and his love of British History with its perfectly defective government that would have been Caesar’s ideal dictatorship, show that he remained convinced that if problems could be made difficult enough, it was only a matter of time before the states were in such financial and social chaos that they would beg for a monarchy, happily ceding their sovereignty to such a government.  That happened in England when they threw out their monarch, King Charles II, sparking a civil war, then brought him back to restore order.  In fact, he often said that America will never be happy until it has a hereditary monarchy.

It is also consistent with a letter he would write to Washington a few years later, after Washington asked him directly if the ultimate object of another heavy-handed tax system provoking the Whiskey Rebellion was to prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy, of which the British constitution is to be the model.

In that letter, repeated here for emphasis, where he lied about his having introduced the idea of a monarchy in the Constitutional Convention he said:  “Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected.  When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits�"despotic in his ordinary demeanour�"known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty�"when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity�"to join in the cry of danger to liberty�"to take every opportunity of embarrassing the general government & bringing it under suspicion�"to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day�"It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.

“It has aptly been observed that Cato was the Tory�"Caesar the Whig of his day. The former frequently resisted�"the latter always flattered the follies of the people. Yet the former perished with the Republic; the latter destroyed it.” .
 Chapter 14B
Rutgers v. Waddington



The world is still deceiv'd with ornament,
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being season'd with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice



When the war was over, Hamilton returned to New York where he married the daughter of one of New York’s most wealthy and politically influential families.  He earned a law degree and opened a practice.  His clients were well heeled Tories who chose to remain after the war rather than return to England.

Still passionately anti-federalist in the original meaning of the word, (meaning he was pro-nationalist or anti-state sovereignty) he immediately began trying to overturn New York’s new constitutional government because it was a document of enumerated powers representing the people’s interests.

His most famous case is Rutgers v. Waddington.  Having failed in the Newburgh Affair, it is Hamilton’s first attempt, to use the courts to overthrow a sovereign government using judicial review.  He was even somewhat successful.  He did this even though the New York Constitution expressly prohibited the practice and created a “Council of Revision” to look at and address potential constitutional questions, concerns, or seeming conflicts.   It is essential to understand this ruling, because it is the same reasoning used by the Supreme Court to overthrow our government when it called our written Constitution unconstitutional.

The essence of the case is that Hamilton used flattery and abstract philosophical discussions to encourage the New York Mayor’s Court to violate the New York State Constitution.  New York passed a Trespass Law that required a Tory to return lands to the American patriots who originally owned them, but fled when the England occupied New York.  Hamilton argued that there is an implied government called the Law of Nations, and it is supreme over all nations’ laws.  His client, he argued, should be treated as a captive because of the Law of Nations, thus the law is required to offer him protection from New York’s law, and cannot force him off his land.  

The “Law of Nations” is a philosophy with a history that takes us back to the Roman Empire, when the gods, most often Saturn, but occasionally in the case of war, Mars, spoke to fetiales (Heralds) in order to ensure divine support for Rome in international disputes.  It carried on into the Holy Roman Empire where God now speaks with the pope.  One could consider it an early form of international relations.    In the 18th Century, Emmerich de Vattel published a book called “Law of Nations.  His book claimed that sovereign governments of free and independent states are moral “persons”; that all nations are inferior to the implied government that is called “The Law of Nations”.   Using Vattel’s ideas, Hamilton argued that because his client was a British citizen living on American soil, he is ruled by the (unwritten) Law of Nations and the court has a moral and legal responsibility to bring New York law into harmony with the Law of Nations.  

He also argued that the peace treaty that gave Americans their independence “implied” far more than the mere words of the treaty, and it is the implication that should take precedence, rather than the actual words written in the treaty.  He was asking for judicial review to throw out both New York’s laws and its written constitution, which would give immense legislative power to the judiciary while making it easier to force New York to capitulate and agree to nationalism by driving its people wild with anger and begging for national help.

Hamilton hated written constitutions.  He much preferred Britain’s system.  Britain claims to have a constitution, but unlike ours, their constitution is unwritten.  There is no document.  The rules are never set, so the rules can change and the goal post can move whenever it is convenient for those who make the rules.  Its government is “constituted by” its collection of laws and judicial precedence, just as your body is constituted by your flesh and bones.  It is a country based on the “rule of law”, as our country is ruled by laws.

When nationalists refer to the constitution, they refer to the nation’s constitution as the British do.  This is common to this day.  When your legislators refer to the constitution, they refer to the body of laws and judicial precedent, though most know that YOU think they refer to the actual written Constitution.  When you or I speak of the Constitution, we speak of something very different.  We speak of a hallowed written document that we think is a contract, a copy of which is visible for inspection in the National Archives.

This causes your government to talk to you in a form of doublespeak.  Your political leaders say one thing but you, in your naiveté, think that they are saying something very different and are agreeing with you.  It is more dishonesty.  This doublespeak is one of the hallmarks of most of Alexander Hamilton’s writing, and it became an essential component of the Supreme Court’s throwing out our Constitutional Republic.  


The problem Hamilton faced was that the New York had a constitution with clear rules outlawing judicial review, and the document was a contractual obligation.  The goal post could not move without lawfully agreed-to amendments to the written constitution.   The constitution had a specified system for handling potential constitutional conflicts or questions of interpretation, and the courts would have no final say. (“the judges of that court shall assign the reasons of such their judgment, but shall not have a voice for its affirmance or reversal.”)

Because a record of the Rutgers v. Waddington proceedings does not exist, we can only infer what was argued based on the final decision that does exist, and it appears that there was lengthy discussion about various philosophers and the governments of ancient empires.  Hamilton clearly asked the court to violate the constitution to create precedence that would become common law as it existed in England, where justices (who could be bought) would have authority over the parliament, even though that was prohibited.  Amazingly enough, he won.

The victory was short-lived.  The New York legislature and governor were furious.  They condemned the decision by passing an act that made Hamilton’s defense unlawful.  They also published an address to the people of New York, explaining the dangers of judicial review, while urging the people to use more caution in the voting booths lest they lose their hard-won freedom.  

Because it is important for us to understand the dangers as well, excerpts from the decision and the address of legislature to the public follows.  As you read them, take the time to realize that you can understand the over-arching issues.  If you do so, it becomes perfectly clear why the judges wanted to increase their own power.

The following excerpted decision is written in 18th century English, and I encourage you to read through it.  If you pay attention, you can see a thought pattern that our own Supreme Court and inferior courts use to obfuscate and distract, as they keep the constitutional goal post in constant but irregular motion.  If you find it too frustrating, you can skip to the end to read a translation in Modern English.  I hope you don’t short-change yourself in that way, but instead choose to use the translation only to help you test your understanding as you consider the issue “for yourself”.

DECISION:

“The supremacy of the Legislature need not be called into question; if they think fit positively to enact a law, there is no power which can controul them.  When the main object of such a law is clearly expressed, and the intention manifest, the Judges are not at liberty, altho’ it appears to them to be unreasonable, to reject it: for this were to set the judicial above the legislative, which would be subversive of all government.

“But when a law is expressed in general words, and some collateral matter, which happens to arise from those general words is unreasonable, there the Judges are in decency to conclude that the consequences were not foreseen by the Legislature; and therefore they are at liberty to expound the statute by equity (morality), and only quoad hoc (in this regard) to disregard it.

“When the judicial make these distinctions, they do not controul the Legislature; they endeavor to give their intention it’s proper effect.

“This is the substance of the authorities, on a comprehensive view of the subject; this is the language of Blackstone  in his celebrated commentaries, and this is the practice of the courts of justice, from which we have copied our jurisprudence, as well as the models of our own internal judicatories. …

“That the legislative, judicial and executive powers of government should be independent of each other, is essential to liberty.

“This principle entered deeply into our excellent constitution, and was one of the inducements to the establishment of the Council of Revision , that the judicial and executive of whom it is composed, might have the means of guarding their respective rights, against the encroachments of the Legislature, whether by design, “or by haste or unadvisedness. …

“From this passage of our constitution, Mr. Attorney seems to regard this determination of the Council of Revision on the law in question, in the light of a judicial decision; by which this court ought to be guided, for the sake of uniformity [of law] in the dispensation of justice.  But surely the respect, which we owe to this honorable Council, ought not to carry us such length; it is not to be supposed, that their assentor objection to a bill, can have the force of an adjudication : for what in such a case, would be the fate of a law, which prevailed against their sentiments ?   Besides in the hurry of a session, and especially flagrante bello, (raging war), they have neither leisure nor means, to weigh the extent and consequences of a law, whose provisions are general, at least not with that accuracy and solemnity, which must be necessary to render their reasons incontrovertible, and their opinions absolute.  The institution of this council is sufficiently useful and salutary, without ascribing to their proceedings, effects so extraordinary; nor is it probable, that the high judicial powers themselves, would in the seat of judgment always be precluded, even by their own opinion given in the given in the council of Revision;---for instance, if they had consented to a bill, general in its provision, and in the administration of justice they discovered, that according to the letter, it comprehended cases, which rendered its operation unseasonable, mischievous, and contrary to the intention of the Legislature, would they not give relief?  Surely it cannot be questioned.

“Upon the whole, this being a statute is obligatory, and being general in its provisions, collateral matter arises out of the general words, which happen to be unseasonable (immoral).  The Court is therefore bound to conclude, that such a consequence was not forseen by the Legislature, to explain it by equity, and to disregard it in that point only, where it would operate thus unseasonably (immorally). …

“We have gone further perhaps into many important subjects  , which have been brought into view by this controversy, than was strictly necessary; but it is time that the law of nations and the nature and effects of treaties should be understood: and in the infancy of our republic, every proper opportunity should be embraced to inculcate a sense of national obligation, and a reverence for institutions, on which the tranquillity of mankind, considered as members of different states and communities so essentially depends.

NEW YORK’S PUBLISHED RESPONSE:

“That there should be a power vested in Courts of Judicature, whereby they might control the supreme Legislative power we think is absurd in itself.  Such power in Courts would be destructive of liberty, and remove all security of property. … if [Judges] are to be invested with power to overrule a plain law, though expressed in general words, as all general laws are and must be: when they may judge the law unreasonable, because not consonant to the Laws of Nations or to the opinions of ancient or modern civilians and philosophers, for whom they have a greater veneration that for the solid statutes and supreme Legislative power of the state: we say if they are to assume and exercise such a power, the probable consequences of their independence will be the most deplorable and wretched dependency of the People.  That the laws should no longer be absolute, would be in itself a great evil; but a far more dreadful consequence arises, for that power is not lost in the controversy, but transferred to Judges who are independent of the people.”

“Permit us, upon this occasion, earnestly to entreat you to join us in a watchfulness against every attempt that may be used, either violently and suddenly or gently and imperceptibly, to effect a revolution in the spirit and genius of our Government;”

The Act:

“As to the act that formally made the practice of Judicial Review unlawful, it reads (in summary).   “…Resolved, That the Judgment aforesaid (Rutgers v. Waddington), is, in its tendency, subversive of all law and good order, and leads directly to anarchy and confusion; because if a Court instituted for the benefit and government of a Corporation may take upon them to dispense with and act in direct violation of a plain and known law of the State, all other Courts, either superior or inferior; may do the like; and therewith will end all our dear-bought rights and privileges, and Legislatures become useless.



TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH:

The Decision:

Contrary to what the attorney for the State suggests, the supremacy of the Legislature is not in question here.  If it chooses to enact a law, there is no power that can stop it.  When the purpose of a law is clearly expressed, and the intention obvious, the Judges are not at liberty to change it even if the law seems immoral to them.  If they were to do that, they would set the judicial above the legislature, which would be subversive of all government.

(Note here that they are doing what Hamilton consistently does.  They are saying that they are not doing what they are doing.  This is the same pattern that you have seen in all the court cases you’ve reviewed so far.)

But when a law is expressed in general words, and something immoral happens, judges must, as a matter of moral uprightness, conclude that the legislature hadn’t considered the matter sufficiently.  This gives the judiciary the freedom to interpret the statue to make it more moral, even if that means it must disregard the law, or just portions of it.

When the judicial acts in that manner, they aren’t controlling the legislature.  They are recognizing the legislature’s mistakes, correcting them in the name of the divined intentions, and putting them into effect.  (underline added for effect)

This is what the celebrated Blackstone explains in his great works (expounding on British Common Law), and this is the practice of common law whose forms and methods we here espouse, and this is the practice of the common law courts of justice, from which we copied our own jurisprudence.
 
The legislative, judicial and executive powers of government should be independent of each other, and we conclude that such independence is essential to liberty.  (No they don’t conclude that.  Judicial review places the courts above the government so that the courts control the legislature.  Same pattern of saying one thing while meaning another.)

We believe that this principle of an independent judiciary was intended in our excellent Constitution, and was one of the inducements to the establishment of the Council of Revision  .  This is what prevents the rights of the executive and the judicial from encroachments of their own unique and independent powers by the legislature, whether by design or poorly written laws. … (Talking to people as if they are stupid or accusing them of being stupid is another hallmark of our judiciary.)

From the passage about the Council of Revision, the attorney for the state seems to consider the Council’s decision as a judicial one that the present court proceeding should follow as law dictates. We disagree.  Though we owe the honorable Council of Revision respect, we should never agree to allow the judiciary to be lowered to such excessive degree or denied its rightful power.  We don’t think that an informed and well-thought-out constitution would deprive the judiciary of an independent power.  We decree that the council’s decision does not equal adjudication.  Adjudication is reserved for the courts no matter what the law says.  

What if a law was in conflict with the council members’ personal sentiments?  (The decision didn’t ask what was to happen when a law was in conflict with the courts’ personal sentiments.)  

The courts exist to protect the laws from those in the council who don’t like them, and who may then try to dismiss them inappropriately.   Besides in the hurry of a legislative session, and especially in a case like this, where the case arose because of New York’s having been at war and its having passed a Trespass law that intended to return property to its original owner, the law harms the Trespasser.  The legislature didn’t think it through properly.  

The legislature had neither the time nor the intellect to weigh all of the ramifications, at least not with the accuracy and solemnity that would render their reasoning unassailable and their opinions absolute.  Only the courts can do that.  That is what judges are for.  

The council is useful and has a good effect in spite of its shortcomings, without granting it such extraordinary power to leave the courts out of such matters.  

Nor is it probable that the legislature intended for the independent power of the justices to be bypassed this way even though some justices are part of the council. �" for instance, if a bill passed into law and a case came up where what the legislature really intended was not met�"for instance, if the legislature and council consented to a bill, and in the course of time they discovered that to honor the law to the letter caused harm that was contrary to the intention of the law, is the council saying that its victims can have no redress?  If the law is to be honored to the letter of the law, and it caused unintentional harm, would the legislature not want to provide relief?  The Trespass Law harms the British residents of this country and the Law of Nations forbids it.

In this case, the statute is obligatory, but being general in its provisions, harm has come to some.  The Court has taken it upon itself to conclude that the legislature, with its inherent shortcomings (stupidity), didn’t consider the law of nations and other things that should have been considered before coming into effect.  It is therefore this court’s responsibility to ignore and set aside any part of a law that would cause inequity in the eyes of the court. …

Perhaps, in our decision, we have wandered far afield into various philosophies and the jurisprudence of various ancient cultures, but it was necessary for us to do so.  It is time for the law of nations and the nature and effect of treaties to be understood.  In the infancy of our republic, every opportunity should be embraced to inculcate a sense of national obligation, and a reverence for institutions like the judiciary, on which the tranquillity of mankind depends.


NEW YORK’S RESPONSE:

That there should be any power whatsoever vested in the courts that allows it to dismiss laws created by the legislative body is absurd.  The Judiciary is not a legislative body.  If the court were to have such extreme power, it would destroy our hard-won liberty and it would remove all security of property as it has attempted to do in this case. … if Judges are to be invested with the power to overrule a plain and clearly written law, then when they judge a law unreasonable because it is not in harmony with the Laws of Nations or the opinions of ancient or modern civilians and philosophers, for whom the court has shown a greater veneration than for the solid statutes and supreme Legislative power of the state: we say that judges unlawfully assumed and then exercised that power.  

The probable consequences of judicial independence will be the most deplorable and wretched dependency of the People.  Were that to happen, laws would no longer be absolute.  That would be the great evil; but a far more dreadful consequence arises, for that power is not lost in the controversy.  It is transferred from the people to the Judges who are independent and not answerable to government or the people on whom it depends.

Permit us, upon this occasion, earnestly to entreat you to be careful.  Watch carefully for any attempt that may be used, either violently and suddenly or gently and imperceptibly, to overthrow the genius of our Government of, by, and for the people.  Your continued liberty depends on it.

The Act:

 …Resolved, That the Judgment aforesaid is openly subversive of all law and good order.  It leads directly to anarchy and confusion.  If a Court has the power to dispense with clear and unambiguous laws, and it acts in direct opposition to them as it has done here, then all other Courts, whether superior or inferior may do the same.  That is when our dear-bought rights and privileges, and Legislatures will become useless.
 Chapter 14C
Shenanigans



Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious
with chances of betrayal.
Chuck Palahniuk



On June 9, 1784, only a short time after the war ended, Alexander Hamilton, along with his wealthy friends, founded the Bank of New York . What is most interesting about this is not that he founded a bank; it is how he founded it.

The Bank of New York was a joint-stock company.  Traditionally, joint stock companies required a charter to do business because these charters offered owners protection from certain liabilities.  Hamilton applied for the charter, but the New York legislators saw more threat than good to come from such a bank.  There were many reasons for that.  The idea of a bank was politically unpopular.  The people hated debt.  Debt is something that enslaves a person. The debt to pay for the war was already crippling.  A bank in New York City could become too powerful.  Furthermore, the legislators didn’t want voters to show their disdain in the upcoming election.  They didn’t act on the request.

Again, traditionally, the only recourse after that rebuff would have been for the partners to form a partnership.  Partnerships are unwieldy and don’t offer the same protections from mistakes. In a partnership, if a partner died, the entire business had to be closed and reformed.  When partnerships were sued, each partner had to be personally named in the suit. Worse still, each partner was personally liable for all of the firm's debts.

By contrast, in a joint-stock company, owners can buy or sell their shares of the business without affecting the operation of the business. Joint-stock companies can sue and be sued, but the partners, acting as shareholders, could not be sued because the joint charter shielded them, which is why such charters were generally known to require legislative consent.  Legislatures of the day rarely granted charters, but when they did, they were to protect the public they served, who could be harmed by them.  

As banks are, by their nature, risky ventures involving huge amounts of capital and a very dark history, the charter was deemed essential.  In the early days of our country, many banks collapsed causing economic upheaval and great general misery.  If his bank collapsed, he and his partners would be protected from the law suits that would be sure to follow.  He needed that protection.

Hamilton thought about it and decided that the charter wasn’t required.  He decided that the most essential advantages of the joint-stock company, being negotiable shares, status as a legal entity, and protection from liability, didn’t really require legislative approval.  So Hamilton, bypassing the legislature, opened his bank anyhow.  The bank was founded under private articles of association until he could force the legislature’s hand.

In their book, “Financial Founding Fathers -- The Men Who Made America Rich”, authors Robert Wright and David Cowen explains the impact that this creativity had on businesses around the country.

“The importance of articles of association has largely been lost to history because most joint-stock companies sought and eventually received formal incorporation. What has been missed is that many joint-stock companies used Hamilton-style articles of association to begin business before receiving formal sanction to do so. Even when faced with a recalcitrant legislature, any new company that so desired could enjoy most of the benefits of the corporate form. The mere option of forming without a charter gave companies great leverage to force the legislature to come to terms. … Hamilton, in short, had greatly reduced the barriers to entry into large-scale enterprises. Because of the loophole Hamilton found and exploited, state legislatures eventually gave up trying to limit the number of corporations and established administrative procedures for incorporation. Not surprisingly, one of the first states to do so, in both manufacturing and banking, was New York.”

From Hamilton’s point of view, the wisdom of founding a bank was clear.  Because of the recent Newburgh Conspiracy, the states had been forced to come around.  Hamilton and his friends would be happy to lend money, with interest attached, of course, to fund New York’s debt.  But the primary motive, after a little more riding the whirlwinds, was to become the national government’s primary banker, denying states access to lenders.

During this time, Hamilton remained politically active.  He was a prolific letter writer and he repeatedly made his case that a strong central government with a standing army was necessary to prevent insurrections like Shays Rebellions, and that the government must have the power to force the states to pay their required taxes.  He did this without ever mentioning his involvement in the Newburgh Conspiracy that sparked the problems in the first place.

Meanwhile, Maryland and Virginia delegated people to attend a conference, originally in Alexandria, but then moved to Mt. Vernon, where Washington presided. They were there to discuss commercial issues of their mutual water border.

The delegates were charged with dealing with issues of commerce, fishing, and navigation in the waters of the Potomac and Pocomoke Rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. Both Maryland and Virginia ratified its proposals that called for the Potomac, which was then under Maryland's sole jurisdiction, to be a common waterway for use by Virginia as well. It also provided for reciprocal fishing rights, dividing the costs of constructing navigation aids, cooperation on defense and cases of piracy. It also called for commissioners to deal with any future problems that might arise.

The Mount Vernon delegates encouraged Pennsylvania and Delaware to join the agreement as well, which would have required congressional approval.  Important to the story, it also called for a convention of all states to discuss such matters so that all states could join, which, by necessity, required amendments to the Articles of Confederation.  If the Articles were not amended, and states joined in a treaty, they would become a second government competing against themselves.

The conference led to another meeting, held in Annapolis, Maryland.  It was called the Annapolis convention.  Alexander Hamilton played a major leadership role.  Twelve delegates from five states attended. (NY, NJ, PA, DE, and VA)

Though the purpose of the convention was to discuss issues of commerce, the formal title of the meeting was “Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government”.   The convention met for four days in September of 1786.

With so few attending, the delegates felt that there were not enough states represented to make any substantive agreement. Their meager efforts were further hampered by fact that, with the exception of New Jersey’s delegates, the letters of appointment required them to limit discussion to matters of commerce.

Before adjourning, Hamilton wrote a report that was signed by all, before being sent to the Continental Congress and to the States. The report asked for another meeting to be held in Philadelphia the following May. It expressed the hope that more states would be represented and that their delegates or deputies would be authorized to examine areas broader than simply commercial trade.

The Continental Congress considered the request and seeing through the rhetoric, understood what was actually being asked of them. In the minutes of their meeting, it is clear that they didn’t speak of amending the Articles of Confederation. The intent was to create a new national government.

The minutes read that it was agreed that such a convention would be “the most probable means of establishing in these states a firm national government”.

But when it came time for the Congress to send the call for a convention to the states, it lied.  The formal written call to the States was for a convention, “for the sole and expressed purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the United States of America”.    The call was met with mixed reviews.

The wealthy ruling class was in almost unanimously in favor.  For them, their fears, enhanced by Hamilton’s frightening rabble rousing about Shays Rebellion were well-founded. They thought that populist ideas of freedom, liberty, and equality were far more dangerous than easily-put-down rebellions.  A rebellion is put down with armies and they could afford that.  Ideas about equality and freedom tend to spread into the lowest segments of society.  

Reports that former New England insurgents were being elected to office in the wake of their rebellions, combined with the new Massachusetts’ governor’s lenient debtor relief policies, New York’s people-friendly constitution, and Pennsylvania’s Bill of Rights and absence of land holdings as a requirement for voting, confirmed their worst fears.  If they didn’t act fast, equality was coming to America!  From Pennsylvania through New England, governments were beginning to represent the people rather than the money.  The trend had to be stopped.

From the more moderate position, delegates to the Continental Congress wanted a legal way to force delinquent states to pay their taxes with hard money.  Moderates like James Madison, preferred maintaining the existing republican form of government but saw that there was reason for government to expand some of its powers to that end.

From the position of the vast majority of the people, there was a slow but steady drift toward less government.  People were yielding to government once the greedy despotic merchants and aristocrats were brought under control.

When the call for a convention was announced, too many saw through the ruse.  Rhode Island, with its populist government now comfortably in place and doing well, refused to send delegates. Virginia’s Patrick Henry declared that he “smelt a rat”.  Other luminaries agreed and refused to attend.  Nearly thirty percent of appointed delegates didn’t show up.  They understood that the Declaration of Independence established thirteen sovereign nations .  They were not so ready to throw it away and give up all that so many had fought and died for.

Those who refused to attend the new convention, believing that they were being lied to about its “sole and expressed purpose” were quickly proven correct.  It took little time for the delegates to greatly expand their granted authority.  The delegates were not revising the Articles of Confederation.  They really were forming an entirely different government that took away the national sovereignty of the member nations! Hamilton’s day had finally arrived.

It is no wonder that they voted to conduct their business in total secrecy.  The uproar would have been reverberating.  A new constitution would not have been possible with a free press.  Delegates who were not honoring their States’ written authority knew that.  (Hamilton and Madison did take notes that were not released until their deaths, which is how we know some of what happened.)

Hamilton finally had his chance to present his design for a new powerful hereditary monarchy with its senate of aristocrats and “enlightened despots”  who held office for life, a system that would keep a House of Commons in check.  If the monarch died without an heir, then the replacement would be chosen by the Senate.  Unspoken was his understanding that Washington, who had no male heirs and would most certainly be elected the first monarch, meant that he himself, the spokesperson for the wealthy and powerful, the son-equivalent of Washington, would be the only logical heir apparent.  

The idea was quickly rejected, so he edited it to soften the words but not the intent.  He replaced words like “monarch” with “governor”.  When it was also rejected, he left in a huff.

Of the seventy delegates that were appointed, only fifty-five showed up at the convention.  When the true purpose of the convention became clear, more left, including New York’s two remaining delegates.   

When Hamilton saw the shift in the balance of power caused by his fellow New York delegates leaving, he quickly returned to Philadelphia. Though he did not have a vote because at least two had to be present from any State to cast a vote, he had the opportunity to exert his considerable influence, especially in committees.  You can see his unique influence in the Constitution today.  It appears in words and phrases like “Law of Nations” and “Necessary Powers”.    

When the proposed Constitution was delivered to the member nations, the objections previously prevented by the veil of secrecy burst forth.  States were outraged, as expected.  What wasn’t expected was that only six of the nine required States were indicating a willingness to ratify it.  Six states objected, as loudly as they could.  Rhode Island liked its government.  It had no desire to give up its freedom.  It didn’t object loudly.  It simply refused to ratify and went about its business.

Four of the first five first States to ratify had reason to prefer a national government.  They were the small States who would be protected from larger neighboring states, as would Maryland when it finally ratified.

Pennsylvania was different in that it was a large State and its Constitution, only two years old, guaranteed the most liberal personal rights of any State.  As the new proposal did not include a Bill of Rights or any safeguards for the state’s rights, and the proposed constitution could conceivably take them all away, their ratification was a curious one.  Minutes of their ratifying convention show that those who attended the Constitutional Convention said that the Constitution was one of enumerated power, so the guaranteed rights and freedoms would not be put at risk.  This limit to government power was thought to be sufficient.  Whether they were telling the truth or not would soon be shown.  Opponents didn’t believe any of it�"with good reason.

With only six states ratifying and seven states rejecting, the Constitution was a failed effort.  There would be no national government and the Articles of Confederation would remain in place.  

The idea that the Constitution was ratified when New Hampshire approved it contains a lot of truth but not complete truth.  It wasn’t nearly that simple.  The story requires that you understand that the Constitution was first rejected.  Only then does what follows make sense.

The only possible course of action for the Constitution’s proponents was to ask the dissenting majority to reconsider. The Nationalists knew that another convention wouldn’t be possible.  In acts of betrayal, delegates had exceeded their authority beyond any and all permissible levels.  They had been sent to Philadelphia to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation, not dissolve state sovereignty that had been fought for with so much blood, tears, and money.  After this fiasco, a majority of states would not be willing to send any delegates.  Too much damage had been done and too many enemies were made.

Alexander Hamilton, who appreciates what can be gained through frenzied whirlwinds, began forming his aristocratic supporters into America’s first national political party.  The political party wasn’t created for the purpose of asking questions, educating, or discussing principles of government in order to establish an informed electorate.  It was established to confuse, obfuscate, promote fervent divisions, attack, accuse, terrify, and undermine all opposition until they achieved their objectives and the people themselves begged for a monarch as happened in England during their Civil War.  Our nation’s first political party, with Hamilton leading the charge, was committed to mind warfare, even though some members of the party, including James Madison, were totally unaware of what they were contributing to and participating in.  

Hamilton began writing a series of anonymous essays for publication in New York newspapers.  His essays ferociously accused opponents of doing what he himself was doing.  He called himself and his supporters “Federalists”, and he called his opponents Anti-Federalists, a word he used as a disparaging epithet.  

The absurdity of this tactic is breath-taking.  He, an avowed nationalist intent on destroying anything that remotely resembled federalism, was the true Anti-Federalist.  Those he called Anti-Federalists were really Federalists, who wanted states to retain their sovereignty, united through their common treaty.  This is the only way that James Madison could have come to be part of the Federalist effort, contributing to the Federalist Papers, he was working against all that he sincerely believed in.  Madison was a staunch supporter of State sovereignty.

This word play used by all the nationalists had the effect of denying the true federalists access to rational language itself.  Redefining words on the fly was a hallmark of Hamilton’s depravity.  In this case it worked to some degree.

This is the same thing we do today when we call our national government a federal government without realizing the absurdity of what we are saying. When the states lost their sovereignty as they eventually did, we ceased to be a federation.  To Hamilton, white was the new black.  Lies were the new truths.  Accuse others of what you are doing and if you do it with the right amount of indignation and enough repetition, and you can raise the passions (emotions) of your readers, you will sound believable.  Call out the boogiemen!  Use fear as a weapon to corrupt peoples’ minds and prevent them from using rational thought.  Repeat what he did when he called for the Revolutionary War by threatening things that would not happen in a government of, by, and for the people.  Welcome to the actual birth of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
 
In spite of how dark his methods were, there was sound reasoning behind this.  The term “Nationalist”, as he and his supporters had been called, was so unpopular and hated that it had become its own disparaging epithet.  The people liked their freedom.  Remember, it was the nationalist faction that forced Congress’ hand to enact the 1785 tax that almost destroyed the northeast states and brought on the my “rebellions” Hamilton used as the excuse to support the much disliked Constitution.    It simply made sense to call the new political party by the other faction’s name.  This would draw unwitting supporters, as, of course it did.  Hamilton must have laughed heartily when we convinced Madison to join his cause.

Using impassioned pleas along with outright lies and strange supposition, he encouraged his readers to not-trust the frail faculty of thought, which is far inferior to emotional response.  In his first letter, he wrote, “An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart”.  He argues that the only way to preserve our liberties is to give them up.

Letters by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay are known as “The Federalist Papers”.  We have all heard about them.  We learned about them in our mandatory schooling.  They are easy to find on the Internet or in a public library and in government websites.  Our Supreme Court uses them to support their decisions and used them to discard our Constitutional Republic and the Bill of Rights.  They are falsely called our “founding documents”.  In truth, they are a major part of the reason why the Constitution was rejected.  They didn’t move a single state.  As they helped support the defeat of the proposed Constitution, they are actually the opposite of our founding principles.

The Anti-Federalists’ papers and speeches, as they were now known, the words that actually swayed people and were the reason we have a Bill of Rights, are suspiciously hidden from us.  Something to take note of is the fact that the Anti-Federalist Papers that preserve our actual founding ideas, are not part of any government web site while the Law of Nations is.

The differences between the two positions could not be more extreme:

Anti-Federalists (True Federalists later called Democrat-Republicans):
The reason why the proposed Constitution was REJECTED unless a Bill of Rights was added.    Federalists who are really Nationalists lying about who they are:
General Views of the
Federalist Party
Defended the Declaration of Independence    Against the Declaration of Independence
Bill of Rights to protect the people from governmental abuse    Bill of Rights unnecessary and a danger to liberty.
States tell national government what it can do; States are sovereign    Nationalism ends State sovereignty; National government tells states and people what to do
Power OF the people.  Power flows from the many to the few, as the only way to prevent government abuses.  Government of, by, and for people.    Power OVER the people.  Power trickles down from the few to the many.  Rulers depend on personal integrity to keep them from abusing their power.  Government of, by, and for the aristocracy.
Interstate commerce to “sustain” a healthy economy
    International trade to “grow” commerce & manufacturing, whether healthy for economy or not.  Ends justify the means
Egalitarian; favored ending the class system    Wealth-based class system.  Consisted of aristocrats’ divine right of superiority
Represented interests of farmers, artisans, and commoners    Represented wealthy merchants and traders from big cities in the east, as well as most plantation owners
Limited government, Enumerated powers    Hamilton: unlimited government
Madison agreed with the other side.
In a government of, by, and for a free people, a standing army is a threat    Strong military essential to defend government from other nations AND from the people themselves
Greater enfranchisement of the people. True representational government �" for the benefit of all    Only the wealthy should vote or hold public office. Government represents the interests of a small, wealthy minority
Judiciary:  Judicial review is tyranny by an unelected oligarchy.  Courts may not set aside laws or alter the scope of the Constitution.  That power must revert to the people themselves.  (Amendment process)    Hamilton:  Judicial review is essential (Federalist 78):  Madison: Judicial review makes the courts more powerful than the people’s legislature.  When two departments of government disagree about the interpretation of the constitution, the people must be involved. (Amendment process)
Freedom of the people    Serfdom of the people
Weak executive    Strong executive
Didn’t like political parties.  Diversity of opinion strengthens liberty.  Individuality is good.    Well organized political party.  Diversity is a weakness that must be destroyed.  Individuality is bad.
Conservative    Liberal

In essence, the Anti-Federalist/Democrat-Republicans stood for the power “of”’ the people.  The Federalist/Nationalists stood for power “over” the people with a strong military to defend that power.  Today’s Republicans, who are actually Nationalists who call themselves Conservatives, and who treasure the ideas presented in the Federalist Papers because they have been told to, are extreme liberals who call themselves conservative as they attack those whom they call liberal (many of whom also are).

Nationalists-called-Federalists believed that because most people are functionally uneducated, government should think for them and force them to become of one mind.  People are a threat to government.   Censorship of ideas ends factions.  

Jefferson believed that because most people are functionally uneducated, proper education should be freely available so that they can run their governments properly.  The history of government corruption shows that government is a threat to people.  Freedom of the press, he said, is the guardian of liberty.

The Anti-Federalist Papers are worth reading because everything that Anti-Federalists worried about has come to pass.  History itself is proof that those who disapproved of the Constitutional Convention on the grounds that its purpose was a lie were correct.  History would quickly show that the Federalists’ promise of a government constrained by integrity and enumerated powers was an intentional lie.

For all the rhetoric in the volumes of essays and in all the speeches given around the country, the proposed Constitution was no closer to passing.  A new convention to fix the problems was not going to be possible.  The Philadelphia Convention’s betrayal had been too great.  The Articles of Confederation were going to stand.  

James Madison was very unlike Hamilton in his views and demeanor.  Madison believed that a constitution is a limit on government power, whereas, Hamilton would soon demonstrate that, in spite of his occasional words to the contrary, he believed in an all-powerful, unrestricted, militarily-supported government that had the right and power to do anything it wanted in order to achieve a desired result.  Had Madison understood what Hamilton was up to, he would never have done what he did next.

Recognizing that the Nationalists lost their argument, and eager to establish the more powerful government, Madison proposed a compromise.  He said that if the dissenting states would agree, he promised to introduce a Bill of Rights in the first session of Congress.  They could be adopted using the Article V amendment process, and in this way become part of the Constitution.  That would limit government’s powers and protect the peoples’ essential liberties.

The dissenting states wanted to offer conditional ratifications, but they were told that conditions would not be accepted.  Massachusetts and New Hampshire then offered tacitly conditional ratifications with the understanding that if Madison couldn’t honor his promise, they would exit the barely formed union.  Only then, with New Hampshire’s ratification, was the Constitution ratified.  Still, if Madison could not get the Bill of Rights ratified, they could form a new federation with neighboring states.  A confederacy of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, and perhaps North Carolina plus Vermont that should shortly become a State, would make them the New World’s pinnacle of wealth and power, something that would most likely attract the other states and bring down the new Constitutional government under the Articles of Confederation.

After New Hampshire, two more states reluctantly agreed to join, but their ratifications were explicitly rather than implicitely conditional and accepted as such.  These two states were  New York and Virginia.  They maintained a lawful and unquestionable right to withdraw from the union any time that the new government usurped any but the expressly given authorities.   

With that, the government of the United States of America was established.

James Madison returned to Virginia where he needed to be elected in order to fulfill his promise.   He was elected to the House of Representatives, and true to his word, he introduced the promised Bill of Rights.  It took some convincing because the hard-liners among the nationalists liked the unlimited government that they now had.  Madison reminded them of the promise and suggested the probable response of the states if their required Bill of Rights was denied.  He also reminded them that Rhode Island and North Carolina were not a part of the union, and effort should be expended to encourage them to participate.  

A few months later, at the repeated urging of Madison, a committee was formed with Madison at the head.  He reviewed all of the various ratification requirements as given in both the tacit and explicit ratifications, and came up with twelve amendments that were approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.


 
Chapter 14D
UNDERMINING THE NEW CONSTITUTION



And woe succeeds to woe
Homer (Iliad)


The government officially opened for business on March 1, 1789.  The Bill of Rights was submitted to the states in September of that year.  They were ratified on December 15, 1791 with the unanimous approval of the states.  Before the Bill of Rights was sent to the states, Hamilton was hard at work, putting his plan into action that would overthrow the constitutional government in order to recreate America as a duplicate of the British Empire so that he could eventually take the helm.

When he wrote the Federalist Papers, warning against a Bill of Rights, he said that the Constitution did not grant the government the power to employ tactics that the Bill of Rights intended to prohibit.  He wrote: “I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”

Now that the government was formally established, Hamilton quickly showed his true colors. He immediately began working to dismantle the doctrine of “enumerated powers”, that is the written Constitution.   In the January following the establishment of the constitutional government, he gave two reports to Congress.  In them, he made several controversial suggestions.  These include the assumption of the states’ war debts and the establishment of a national bank�"both unconstitutional.  He also proposed a tax on distilled spirits.

He begins by granting some legitimate concerns.  If there is a foreign war, government will need to borrow money.  A good credit rating will lower the interest rates.  Where he goes from there forces one to stretch the imagination to encompass an ocean of cognitive dissonance. In his report, obviously written for the benefit of the majority of Nationalists calling themselves Federalists, who controlled all three branches of government, he writes:

“The ready answer to which question is, by good faith; by a punctual performance of contracts. States, like individuals, who observe their engagements are respected and trusted, while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.”

In reading those two sentences, one might think that he is saying that all contracts should be honored, but he is not.  He is saying that ONLY financial contracts (to the nation’s lenders and leaders in the elected government) should be honored, and it is the peoples’ moral responsibility to do so, even if it means government’s breaking its contract with the people and the States.

Ignoring the fact that the Constitution is a “public engagement” (contract), and that a breach of it is a threat to the public, he writes:

Every breach of the public engagements, whether from choice or necessity, is, in different degrees, hurtful to public credit (unsaid: also to the public).  When such a necessity does truly exist, the evils of it are only to be palliated by a scrupulous attention, on the part of the Government, to carry the violation no further than the necessity absolutely requires.  

The levels of deceit and trickery in the above quote are worthy of the top-notch attorney that he is.  First, he assumes that government has a “responsibility” to violate the constitution and may do so with impunity.  Then he misleads by using the words “necessary powers clause”.  That clause should rightfully be called the “necessary and proper clause”.  That, because Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly says that an unenumerated power should be used only when it is BOTH necessary AND proper.  As the Constitution is clear about the uses for which government may spend money, and spending money to pay off states’ debts is not an authorized expense, thus it is improper, he simply bypasses the words “and proper” and continues with his argument, relying on the word, “necessary” and the political impotence and ignorance of his opponents.

He continues: “It is, therefore, highly important, when an appearance of necessity seems to press upon the public councils, that they should examine well its reality, and be perfectly assured that there is no method of escaping from it, before they yield to its suggestions.” Notice how he presents lies as truth.  First, government has no power to do what it is not authorized to do, yet he is saying “do it anyhow”.  Second, assumption of state debts is not necessary unless you have an agenda that is contrary to the Constitution itself.  He covers his lie by portraying himself as a paragon of moral virtue and exacting logic, just as John Adams said he does.  He does this while appealing to the least rational and most immoral interests of his creditor-audience.

Continuing:  “For, though it cannot safely be affirmed that occasions have never existed, or may not exist, in which violations of the public faith, in this respect, are inevitable; yet there is great reason to believe that they exist far less frequently than precedents indicate,”…

Notice that he is saying that he knows that his idea is contrary to the Constitution, but that is OK with him because situations exist where it is inevitable. Then, typical of Hamilton, he insults those who DO understand what he is saying.  Continued:  [those who disagree are] “oftenest either pretended (liars), through levity (shallowness) or want of firmness (cowardice); or supposed, through want of knowledge (ignorance)”.

After saying that constitutional exceptions are rare, now he is saying that constitutional violations are so common as to be expected, as he says: Expedients often have been devised to effect, consistently with good faith, what has been done in contravention of it.”  In other words, there are many reasons to violate that which can’t be legally violated.  Violating the Constitution with a purpose in mind justifies the violation.  That is commonly understood by those who share the morality upon which his entire report is based.

Finally, in a stunning paragraph, here presented in pieces, he appeals to the egos of the wealthy saying:  “those who are most commonly creditors of a nation are, generally speaking, enlightened men.”  First, that’s a lie.  Such men were vehemently anti-enlightenment.  Again, this was meant to obfuscate and confuse at a time when the phrase “enlightened despot” became popular. Hamilton had no interest in becoming an enlightened despot.  Despot was more to his liking.

In his first Federalist paper, he says that those who claim to be enlightened are faking it for political gain.  Now, just as he called himself a Federalist, depriving his political enemies from use of the word that accurately describes them, he calls the system of serfdom that he is trying to implant, the enlightened view of the world, and of course, the creditor-class will agree.

The man who is telling people to violate their oaths of office and intentionally undermine the new Constitution, then tells his readers that if they do not agree with him, they are not moral.  The only way to be moral is to be immoral, and the only way to instill public happiness is for powerful men to be immoral by stealing power from the people and subverting the peoples’ promised protection.  He continues: “While the observance of that good faith, which is the basis of public credit (and public faith), is recommended by the strongest inducements of political expediency, it is enforced by considerations of still greater authority. There are arguments for it which rest on the immutable principles of moral obligation.”

Morality trumps law.  This is exactly what Hamilton argued during Rutgers v. Waddington, when he asked the court to resolve an issue in which his client was clearly at fault, using common law, that is nothing more than legalized Catholic morality. Legalized morality, in Hamilton’s mind was the only way to eliminate factions in a society.  For Hamilton, the state is God and the ultimate purveyor of morality comes through Judicial Review until America has its Caesar.

At this point, his writings turn even more ominous.  He now introduces the idea that debt-funded money serves as a viable currency.  In other words, if government were to borrow needed money, and the lending bank were to issue money that the government declares as its legal tender, then debt is money.  (What else could someone who established the Bank of New York be expected to say as he sought to make his bank the national bank?)  Negative money (anti-money) equals positive money.  Taking this idea from the Bank of England, he assures his readers that interest-laden debt is a superior currency to government printed currency, even if government-printed currency does not carry any interest.  Also unmentioned is the fact that there is more debt than there is specie to cover the debt-funded currency.  

This, Hamilton assures his readers, will increase the value of “landed property”.  

Landed property is part of overt feudalism.  A feudal lord has possession of landed property.  He possesses the land, but the serfs work it and pay large portions of the rewards of their labors to the lord as rent.  Hamilton never addresses how it will affect property in general.  He only impresses on his reader, on more than one occasion, that this applies to “landed property”, that has its own special meaning.  Again, like any good defense counsel, he fails to say that which is not being said:  If land is expensive, small farmers will be unable to afford to buy it, thus forced to “rent” land. Also left unsaid because for those Nationalists he is addressing, it didn’t need to be said,  is that he has a plan already in the works to allow the government to seize property that is not landed, in order to sell it to his friends at small fractions of their already deflated prices, exactly as happened in Shays Rebellion.

Quickly skipping over his many omissions, he changes the subject and addresses the states domestic debt certificates before returning to the importance of the assumption of state debt.  In explaining how refusal to assume these debts would damage the states as well as the union, his argument is bizarre, to say the least.  He argues that “the principal branch of revenue is exclusively vested in the union”, and, “a state must always be checked (by the national government) in the imposition of taxes on articles of consumption”.

According to Hamilton, this is because states can’t impose their taxes on other states, which makes little sense.  No state would think it could, except through interstate commerce where a person crosses the border to buy a taxed article then takes it home.  Hamilton is laying out his plan to divest the states of all power and sovereignty.  He says that if states were to have such taxing ability, improper taxation on the part of (unenlightened) States will harm their industry and commerce.  He is pulling these things out of his magic hat and accusing the states of incompetence.  Most regions of the States were agrarian and didn’t want Britain’s Mercantilist model.

The Constitution does not deny States, that are sovereign nations united through a common treaty called the Constitution, the right to impose taxes on articles of consumption.  Nor does it give the national government the authority to tell a State how it may, may not, or must conduct industry and commerce within its own sovereign borders.  In fact, as you saw in the first chapter, power to do so is expressly prohibited by the commerce clause of the Constitution.  Congress may not regulate commerce within a state without violating the Constitution.

The rest of his report suggests various constitutional and unconstitutional methods of meeting the debt, justifying his desire to use the unconstitutional means to assume state debts.   The theme of this reports is: “To justify and preserve their confidence [to creditors]; to promote the increasing respectability of the American name [to creditors], to answer the calls of justice [from creditors]; to restore landed property to its due value [for the wealthy creditors]; to furnish new resources, both to agriculture and commerce [for the wealthy creditors]; to cement more closely the union of the States [to eliminate states’ rights by forcing them to be inferior to the national government], to add to their [States] security against foreign attack; to establish public order on the basis of an upright liberal policy  [destroy the written constitution and replace it with a liberally construed government that serves the wealthy].”

When it comes to his proposed tax on distilled spirits, he has but one concern, that being the ability to collect the taxes in the western regions.  They do not make demands of government, so bank paper does not reach them.  

Rural areas don’t have the ability to pay taxes with currency, he says.  He asks congress to consider how to address this problem.  But by December of that year, Hamilton rejected Congress’ advice and declared war on those farmers and artisans in the same regions.  He would use taxes to force them to integrate their lifestyles with the British mercantile system he wanted to impose.  If they wouldn’t cooperate, he would seize their land and force them to turn to the waiting arms of industry for their survival.

He writes that it would be injurious to the commerce conducted by traders to require taxes to be paid before the products are removed from the ships, but in that paragraph, he is only talking about those particular traders.  When it comes to the tax on traded distilled spirits in the western regions, unless the still-operator could afford to pay a bond, and none in the rural areas could because of an acknowledged lack of currency, (and the proposed act determined that the bond could not be paid with whiskey) he had to pay his tax in non-existent specie or currency�"at the tax office, wherever it was�"before the spirits could be removed from a building in which it must be distilled.  (No more outdoor brews.)

He rejected a sales tax out of hand.  He objected to suggestions that the tax be on houses or land.  That would make the tax far less per household, Hamilton agrees, and people have never shown an unwillingness to pay taxes on houses or land, and that is exactly why that method should not be used.  

Left unsaid, if his policy is adopted, rapid inflation will be immediate.  Everything’s value will change. This will force heavy taxes on those who do not use currency, while framing tax policy to his friends’ advantage, just as happened in the many uprisings of the Regulators.

Because he knows that the tax will not be collectible, he suggests hiring layers of inspectors in those regions.  Regional inspectors, he says, will have more loyalty to the government than to the locals.  They will be less corruptible.   Hamilton’s writing style always says much in what he doesn’t say.  Today that is called “spin”, and Hamilton excels in it.

Having taken criticism from his previous report where he made the mistake of telling states that they did not have the right to tax consumption, he intended to deal with that indirectly at the same time.  He would make the taxes high enough to squeeze the states out and threaten their governments, as Massachusetts’s government had been threatened with Shays Rebellions that Hamilton himself forced into existence.

His was a multi-faceted plan directed at bring all creditors (wealthy) into the protective arms of the national government while forcing the evil freedom-lovers to give up their freedom to the aristocrat government he was personally creating.  If he did this, more gold would be available to the nation and less to the states.  Wealthy creditors would be assured that their debts would be repaid, with the help of a national army enforcing taxation.  This, in Hamilton’s mind would irrevocably merge the interests of the wealthy with the national government, a condition he thought of as essential.  

Left unspoken was his obvious sentiment that if it would drive the States into bankruptcy, forcing increased taxation, all the better.  He knew that heavy taxes are good for rebellions that can be put down with military might, at the expense of residual claims that States are still sovereign governments.  It would also end the incessant talk of liberty by farmers and artisans who were universally opposed to reinstituting the same kinds of oppressive British policies they had just fought a war to eliminate.

The tax on distilled spirits was largely lost in discussion because of the proposed establishment of a national bank that would be used so that the national government would buy state debt.

At the Philadelphia convention for proposed amendments to the Articles of Confederation (since named the Constitutional Convention), it was decided that a national bank presented too many dangers to be considered.  The government operating under the Articles of Confederation had a national bank, so members were familiar with it.  They saw the dangers, especially after knowing what happened in Shays Rebellions.  Delegates to the Philadelphia convention agreed that a national bank was unacceptable. The many reasons for rejection were discussed:

A national bank would tend to favor one class of society over another (as they do). The bank would give favorable treatment to the merchants in the east while neglecting the needs of poorer farmers in the west (as they did). It would bring the interests of the wealthy too close to government (as they did).  Legislators who saw good profits by investing in the bank (as they did) would be in a position of serious conflict of interest and may legislate in ways that profited the banks and themselves at the expense of good government (as they did).  As, even by Hamilton’s accounts, greed generally predominates over reason, goodwill, or good government, a bank might eventually take indirect control of the government (which of course, history shows us has happened and is the case today).

Ignoring the intentional unconstitutionality of his proposed bank, Hamilton framed out his ideal national bank.  It would be a private bank and would have a monopoly on printing money.  In a direct appeal to greed and profits among his friends both in and out of Congress, he says: “The great bulk of the stock of a bank will consist of the funds of men in trade (international traders), among ourselves, and moneyed foreigners.”  

He has obviously been reminded of concerns about his earlier proposal for a bank and he addresses the biggest ones in turn, always to the advantage of his friends.  

The reason that the money should be privately issued by a bank, he says, is because governments can’t be trusted with a power that dangerous.  

He admits that it does make all three branches of government inferior to a private corporation, but this, he assures his readers, is a good thing.  

Predictable mismanagement by government is too dangerous, he claims.  Only wealthy financiers can be trusted to look out for the nation’s interests.  

In fact, he does offer an excellent explanation of what government has done to itself with the helpful cooperation of bankers who now control all branches of government.
 
His report again points to the fact that too much of the country still uses direct barter, making it more difficult to “alienate the land to profitable advantage”.  

This, Hamilton insists, will be corrected by a bank.  Left unsaid: The way to get money circulating in remote areas where no currency exists is to impose heavy taxes in those regions.  This would force farmers to sell parts of their land to get their hands on specie while enabling the government to seize property when possible.  When siezed, property would be bought up by the creditor class that will remember, when Washington dies or retires, what he did for them.

It is a direct repeat of that which caused the Regulators to come out in force in all western regions.  It is as corrupt a plan as any in America’s history.  In Hamilton’s mind, only acceptance of that plan will put an end to the growing sense of liberty and democracy among the people, while turning government into an aristocratic social construct.   

Hamilton, who staunchly believes that force and corruption are the only two methods governments should use, chose both.  He appealed to corrupt Nationalist  legislators and inferred the use of force until the farmers submitted to giving up their freedom.  Every day brought him a step closer to his goal of being the new Caesar.

Northern States that were more involved in commerce would see increased tariffs.  That would allow merchants and manufacturers to raise their prices on their own merchandise.  As western distillers would be effectively put out of business because of the uneven nature of the tax on their distilled spirits, and the impossibility of paying the necessary bond, the distilleries in the east would also profit from that.  For the people who Hamilton hated anyhow, all of this meant significantly increased prices, and for him, this was good.  Serfdom doesn’t work well if things are affordable.

Southern states had the most to lose from debt assumption.  They were agricultural.  Most of their war debt had already been paid.  This would increase their debt significantly and unnecessarily.  This, of course, would force them to increase taxes.

It didn’t look like his plan was going to pass.  Looking for a way to win them over, Hamilton asked his neighbor, Thomas Jefferson, to host a dinner meeting between himself and Madison.  That dinner meeting would come to be Jefferson’s greatest sorrow in life.  In a letter to Washington, he wrote that he was duped.

Madison, a Virginian, and leader in the egalitarian movement would work to appease southern states, but, the story goes, it would take a promise that the nation’s capitol would be moved from New York to the south.  Given the nature of the many pro-freedom complaints, such a weak offer seems trivial and meaningless; hardly worth considering. Why would moving the capitol, first to Philadelphia and then to Virginia/Maryland (Washington D.C.) cause legislators to violate their oaths of office to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic?  Moving the capitol to a more central location makes sense, but selling the peoples’ liberty and their constitutional republic in exchange for that move makes no sense.  No wonder Jefferson grieved when the bank act passed.

Perhaps the change of heart is not so curious when Congress stopped debating about how much to pay the original holders of war debt certificates and how much to pay the speculators who bought them.  Hamilton won this argument.  Payment was to be made to the holder/speculator only, without regard to how fraudulently they were obtained.  Speculators, including many of the national government’s legislators, suddenly raced to buy up as many of the debt certificates and continental dollars as they could find.  They bought them at the most distressed prices possible.  

These wealthy charlatans knew something that the sellers didn't know: government would soon redeem them at full face value, including the interest that, in many cases, had been accruing for as many as sixteen years.  Profits would be enormous.  It was important to get their hands on the certificates before word leaked out and the newspapers announced the deal.  

Today, this is called “insider trading”, a practice that is illegal if you do it, but is commonly used by your own elected representatives and their aides, who profit as handsomely from such things today .  In addition to legislators, wealthy friends of legislators from the commercial centers of Philadelphia and New York went in search of old debt certificates and continental dollars. So much for the code of honor of bankers that was going to keep government constrained.  That honor looks more like honor among thieves.

Why would such a travesty be allowed?  Because the small farmers who valued freedom did not have the wealth that allowed them to hold public office and they were, by law, under-represented.  There was nothing that they could do but complain.  The wealthy in the commercial centers held all power.  The aristocracy was taking shape.

Congress approved the bulk of both measures, but before it could become law, Hamilton had to convince Washington, who was obviously concerned about what he was hearing from aides and reading in the news papers.  His Attorney General, Edmund Randolph declared it unconstitutional, as did his friend, James Madison, as well as the brilliant Thomas Jefferson and his Secretary of War, Henry Knox.  His friend, Hamilton, disagreed.

Jefferson’s response to Washington’s question about it’s constitutionality sums up the opposition.  He wrote: “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’” (Wording of our 10th Amendment.) To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.".

Hamilton once again proved his inability to be honest.  Again breaking his assurance in the Federalist Papers, when he said, “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do”, Hamilton wrote his response to President Washington.  He now argues that the Constitution didn’t specifically prohibit establishing a banking charter, so its constitutionality is implied, no matter what was said or not-done in the Philadelphia convention, or even if the 10th Amendment was promised in exchange for ratification of the Constitution.

Hamilton assumes the validity of his favorite argument�"implied powers:  “It is conceded that implied powers are to be considered as delegated equally with express ones”, he wrote.  As it wasn’t conceded, and many have offered many rational arguments against them, and explanations about how an absence of authorization does not equal authorization, his response is a calculated lie.  He repeats: “It is not denied that there are implied well as express powers, and that the former are as effectually delegated as the latter”�"yet he is lying to Washington again. His reasoning:  because I said so.  His opponents disagree.

Hamilton offers the same arguments that he did many years ago when he tried to overthrow New York State’s constitutional government.  He brings up “The Law of Nations”.  Openly comparing the United States to a conquered territory, which, according to the Law of Nations, would not be limited by a written constitution, Hamilton assures Washington that a conquering nation is entitled to do as it pleases.  In essence, he said that after America won its victory over Britain, the Nationalists then conquered America.  He seems to forget that the Nationalists lost the battle for the proposed Constitution as well as the battle against the Bill of Rights.  He is playing to Washington’s lack of intellect and trust.

Hamilton seems to have looked back on his experience in establishing the Bank of New York outside of established law, using the premise that establishing a bank without government approval was not “specifically prohibited” by the New York Constitution or its laws, therefore his right to do so is authorized by omission.  

Resting the balance of his argument on his favorite standby:  “implied powers”,  he tells Washington that the bank can be further authorized by the necessary power clause.  When it comes to necessary powers, Hamilton arguesthat a power doesn’t have to be necessary to be necessary.  As long as the ends are good, then the means to that end are meaningless, be they constitutional or not.  Again, he neglects to remind Washington that a necessary power must also be proper, which means enumerated in the Constitution.

Now the lies in Hamilton’s Federalist Papers are further exposed.  Government, he insisted, is all-powerful unless the Constitution expressly prohibits an action.  But because necessary doesn’t have to mean necessary, (the source of the “Words are Magic Doctrine), government can do whatever it wants.  Furthermore, he advises, if a nation cannot grant legal or artificial personhood status to a corporation, it cannot call itself a legitimate sovereign nation. (Again, appealing to the not-so-bright Washington.)

Black is white.  Unconstitutional is constitutional.  Implied means enumerated.  Necessary means unnecessary.  No authorization means authorized.  Pieces of paper are persons.  George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four” is taking shape as the United States of America: an aristocracy being falsely called a democracy, with its citizens no longer free, but now subjects of the invisible crown that holds unlimited powers, takes shape.

It’s rather hard to imagine Washington, the beloved defender of liberty, becoming a champion of serfdom, but that’s what happened when he signed the bill into law.  Did he not understand what he was doing?  It’s possible.  By every account, he was barely competent. Was he senile?  Evidence in favor of that exists. Did Washington know that Hamilton was a Libertine whose words could not be trusted?  Clearly, the answer to that is no.   Hamilton, who guarded Washington's secret near-illiteracy, remained his closest advisor.  At least he didn’t believe what he had been told about him by so many.  Was he a defender of liberty?  The answer to that is also a resounding NO!  He was a defender of the aristocracy, and the aristocracy could never be allowed to be controlled by the people.

Did Hamilton employ methods of twisting Washington’s mind until it was useful for nothing but mischief?  Evidence of that also exists.    Did Washington forget that the Philadelphia Convention, that he chaired, had discussed the matter and agreed that it would be a danger to the government?  Perhaps, but it is more likely that he wasn’t paying attention or didn’t understand what was being discussed.  Did he know that the Constitution was to be one of enumerated powers? Yes, he understood the debate about ratification of the constitution with its Bill of Rights, and his own attorney general, secretary of state, secretary of war, and his friend James Madison advised him otherwise.  Was he blackmailed in some way?  It certainly looks that way.  

At some point during the Washington administration, Hamilton was threatening to “undeceive” the American people about Washington’s true nature and incompetence, stripping him of his beloved though false reputation as a Revolutionary War hero amd defender of liberty.  Vice President John Adams and Washington's staff were outraged by Hamilton’s public accusations and immediately went to work to protect Washington’s reputation.  Whatever the cause for selling out American liberty, the country officially switched from a largely agrarian culture of a free people to a mercantile one in the imageof Britain, where people are the servants of money and subjects of the Nation.

On August 4, 1790, less than a year and a half since the establishment of the new country, the bill became law and our Constitutional Republic was dealt a near-fatal blow.

The United States would borrow ten million dollars from the bank and would use that loan to purchase a twenty percent share of the bank. The loan was to be repaid in annual installments. The government would also keep all of its deposits in the bank.

Government, a shareholder, would receive dividends based on profits.  Though it paid six percent on the money it borrowed, it would receive dividends at a rate that would amount to a sixteen percent return on the investment.

Private investors would own eighty percent of the shares.  To buy a $400 share, $100 was to be in specie and the other three quarters in letters of credit that wealthy speculators, including legislators, had just defrauded from veterans, small farmers, and artisans.  These were received at their face value and honored by the government.  When the shareholders sold their shares, they would receive specie.  It was an open money-laundering scheme that allowed those who defrauded the American people to spend their hoarded, ill-gotten scraps of paper.  It was a repeat of what happened in Masssachusetts, where the legislature allowed the wealthy to pay their taxes with worthless scraps of paper while it required specie from those who had none.

The bank could lend up to ten million dollars more than it had in deposits. The bill read, “The total amount of the debts, which the said corporation shall at any time owe, whether by bond, bill, note, or other contract, shall not exceed the sum of ten millions of dollars, over and above the monies then actually deposited in the bank for safekeeping” unless otherwise provided for by law.

Why a bank would need the right to assume debts up to ten million dollars over the amount of money deposited for safekeeping is a legitimate question.   The answer to that lies in the idea of “Fractional Reserve Banking”.  

Because of Hamilton’s Bank Act, the U.S. government did not start printing dollars until 1862.  Until then, the bank printed paper currency that the government agreed to accept as valid currency.  When the bank printed a dollar, it was not actually printing currency.  It was printing a promissory note that could be exchanged for gold or silver.  The bank promised to redeem the dollar, thus it was nothing more than an IOU to the holder of the dollar.  The holder called the note a dollar and thought of it as currency because he had been led to believe that it is currency.  Being able to go into debt to the tune of ten million more than it had on deposits is a way of saying “Fractional Reserve Banking”.

Fractional reserve banking” was invented in the Dark Ages, when international trade made wealth creation so easy that lords gave up their ownership of serfs and fiefdoms in favor of a more potent kind of power.  Goldsmiths rented space in their “safes” where people could store their valuables. As they thought about it, they realized that everyone didn’t want their gold back at the same time.  They saw a way to give themselves power greater than a king’s.

When people put their valuables in their safe, they were given a receipt.  These receipts began being traded as currency because they were more convenient than barter.  The goldsmiths realized that they could write counterfeit receipts to themselves and use them as currency that they didn’t really have.  

The goldsmiths also lent money.  As the Catholic Church prevented Christians from lending money to other Christians, they looked to the Jews for loans that the new free slave system sometimes made necessary, which is why all the medieval lenders were Jews.  Because (until 1964) the Catholic Church also taught that the Jews killed Jesus and every Jew was to be held personally responsible for that, anti-Semitism was pretty universal throughout the Holy Roman Empire.  Most of Europe made it unlawful for a Jew to hold most jobs.  Being a lender or goldsmith were two of the few jobs a Jew could hold.  Being treated so despicably by the general population, counterfeiting receipts was probably their way of getting back at those who abused them with mistreatment.

This counterfeiting made them very wealthy.  Soon, every king in Europe has his own “Court Jew”.  Whether the kings knew that the money was simply invented into existence is not known, but what is known is that when a king owed the court Jew too much money, that man’s life no longer mattered.  With his death, the debt evaporated.

This is the system that Hamilton wanted to put into place with the backing of the national government.  He complained that the States were draining the national government of it’s rightful borrowing power. He never lost his zeal to bankrupt the States and grow internal dissension and social disorder so that the people would demand a monarch.

The bank’s IOUs were made in the image of currency.  Hamilton explained why “illusions” were helpful in his 1781 letter to Robert Morris: “Paper credit depends much on opinion, and opinion is often guided by outside appearances. A circumstance trivial as this may seem, might have no small influence on the popular imagination.”  Furthering the illusion, the name of the bank was First Bank of the United States, leading depositors to believe that the bank was an official United States institution and that the United States had printed the currency.

What the carefully worded law said is that the bank could issue paper money in amounts up to ten million dollars more than it had in “deposits for safekeeping”.  This means that it could print money for which it did not have assets, hence the need to incur debt to itself as it issued debt-based currency.  

Debt-backed currency can legitimately be called anti-money because it serves some very dark purposes.  When currency is created by a bank exclusively, the bank never prints the interest that is due into existence.  This causes the need for increased borrowing to come up with the money needed to pay the interest.  This causes inflation.  The creation of inflationary anti-money allows those of means, who can afford to borrow, to buy goods and services at deflated prices, while those who must wait until the money trickles down, must buy at inflated prices.  Its another gift to Hamilton’s friends.

With passage of the act, the constitutional dam that once held powers in check came crashing down.

Public outrage was instantaneous and widespread.  Even Hamilton wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the reaction.  

The wealthy loved it.  But the not-so-wealthy saw the emergence of unstoppable tax-and-spend policies that would deprive them of their liberty and prostrate them at the feet of commerce.

In addition to newspapers going wild, States were putting together resolutions condemning the Act.  This may have been part of Hamilton’s plan because it sent the unfair tax on distilled spirits, integral to his plan, into the background.  It was excellent cover.  Those in the west with no currency and no news papers had no way to get their voices heard about the dangers to come.

Virginia was the first to pass a resolution that condemned Congress.  Remember, Virginia and New York still have the legal right to secede if this measure is undertaken.  (And if those nation-states do, all do.)  Popular support for the national government that did not understand the meaning of limits was declining.  

The Virginia Resolution reads in part:

“That it is with great concern they [The Virginia Legislature] find themselves compelled, from a sense of duty, to call the attention of Congress to an act of their last session, intitled "An act making provision for the debt of the United States," which the General Assembly conceive neither policy, justice nor the constitution warrants. Republican policy in the opinion of your memorialists could scarcely have suggested those clauses in the aforesaid act, which limit the right of the United States, in their redemption of the public debt. On the contrary they discern a striking resemblance between this system and that which was introduced into England, at the revolution; a system which has perpetuated upon that nation an enormous debt, and has moreover insinuated into the hands of the executive, an unbounded influence, which pervading every branch of the government, bears down all opposition, and daily threatens the destruction of everything that appertains to English liberty. The same causes produce the same effects!

“In an agricultural country like this, therefore to erect, and concentrate, and perpetuate a large monied interest, is a measure which your memorialists apprehend must in the course of human events produce one or other of two evils, the prostration of agriculture at the feet of commerce, or a change in the present form of foederal government, fatal to the existence of American liberty.” (Actually, both threats have been realized.)

“During the whole discussion of the foederal constitution by the convention of Virginia, your memorialists were taught to believe "That every power not granted was retained," under this impression and upon this positive condition, declared in the instrument of ratification, the said government was adopted by the people of this Commonwealth; but your memorialists can find no clause in the constitution authorizing Congress to assume the debts of the states! As the guardians then of the rights and interests of their constituents, as sentinels placed by them over the ministers of the foederal government, to shield it from their encroachments, or at least to sound the alarm when it is threatened with invasion, they can never reconcile it to their consciences, silently to acquiesce in a measure, which violates that hallowed maxim: a maxim on the truth and sacredness of which the foederal government depended for its adoption in this Commonwealth.”

Hamilton wonders how to use all the powers of government to bring an end to their influence.  He knows that military power will not be acceptable, but what other powers could he use?  In a letter to John Jay, he wrote:

“This is the first symptom of a spirit which must either be killed, or it will kill the Constitution of the United States. … Ought not the collective weight of the different parts of the government be employed in exploding the principles they contain?”

The only thing he could mean in such a statement is that the word “Constitution” doesn’t mean “Constitution”, as the word is commonly understood by all but legislators today.  For him, the word “Constitution” means “government”�"his government.  He uses the word as Britain uses the word:  The Constitution is a suggestion�"a vague idea�"the body of laws and judicial precedents that determine the morality of any law.

Just as when, in the Federalist Papers, he said that people had to give up their liberty to the national government who will protect their liberties (give up their freedom to keep it), he is again accusing those who are defending the sanctity of the Constitution, of wanting to tear it down, and he wants to find a way to use the full force of government power to stop them from stopping him.

If there was acrimony during the Constitutional debate there was near war raging after Washington’s decision.  The betrayed were calling foul.

Those assuming power in an unlimited national government were gloating and calling publicly berating their “opponents” whom they had indeed just “conquered”.  

Where, before, there had been the Federalist party with no national opponent, the opposition began its first steps in organizing a national party of Democratic-Republicans.  Until then, the ideas of political parties were the antithesis of a government of, by, and for people.

The newspaper frenzy was wild.  When Democratic-Republicans couldn’t get their essays printed by Federalist-owed newspapers, they pooled their money to start their own paper.  Washington, who had been the nations beloved war hero and founding father was scourged, as were all the Federalists.  Such horrifying insults thrown at Washington hurt him deeply.  

A full month after the act establishing the bank passed, Hamilton published an address to the people telling them to hold on to their old debt certificates, that would soon be honored at face value by the government.  

Of course, as he well knew, these had already been bought by his friends and allies, in congress and in the cities, and invested them at face value in bank shares. It was nothing more than an act of extreme cruelty where he intentionally rubbed salt into exposed wounds.

 Chapter 4E
THE WHISKEY REBELLION


La tyrannie est toujours mieux organisée que la liberté.
(Tyranny is always better organized than liberty.)
Charles Péguy



Meanwhile, the other part  of Hamilton’s sinister plans, already in the works, was steadily taking shape.

The Whiskey tax, as it came to be called, was Hamilton’s proposal to use the strong arm of government to destroy the economies and the people of his political enemies�"those who held  the “evil” freedom-loving ideas.

In areas in the Appalachian Mountains, whiskey was currency.  As explained, cash didn’t exist there.  As a currency, whiskey was actually a pretty good one.  It didn’t spoil. It was relatively easy to move about in a part of the country with no decent roads.  It was the only sensible way to get the harvest over the mountains because, once distilled, it could be carried by pack animals.  Being stored in barrels, it wasn’t susceptible to theft.  It could hold through the winter until the snow and ice melted.  It didn’t freeze.  In the summer it could be stored without refrigeration.  It didn’t invite rodent infestations. Counterfeiting wasn’t a problem.  It’s value was self-regulating making it immune to inflation. This, because it was consumed locally and any excess was exported to the east. Once exported, it would not come back into circulation like ordinary money, because local whiskey, that hadn’t been transported over the mountains and back, was cheaper. Hoarding was counter-productive because demand was limited.  It also had other valuable uses.  It was a necessary commodity in every home.  It was a good disinfectant and it was a known medicine.  In this sense, the Whiskey Tax was America’s first tax on health care.  It was also the nation’s first tax on currency itself.

Though the people in rural areas were farmers and artisans first, and whiskey only supplemented their simple lifestyles, the act placed a heavy burden on the most basic aspects of their survival.  With whiskey being currency, wages, rents, and supplies that could not be personally made or grown were taxed, while wealthy easterners paid no such additional taxes.  The tax made everything more expensive.  Commodities were then made even more expensive when the new tariffs included in the same act encouraged eastern merchants to raise their prices, something the wealthy merchants liked very much but it impacted the poor and the moneyless throughout the countryside.  This intensified the impact on the defenders of liberty, as they saw themselves.

The tax put the westerners in the same situation as those whose lives were ruined by unfair taxes during the Shays/Regulators Rebellions, as the scheming Hamilton knew it would.

The act included a policy of searches and seizures.  It required distillation to be done in marked buildings, and if it wasn’t, then agents of the government could search homes.  In those cases that needed a warrant issued by a justice of the peace, a suspicion would have been sufficient to get a warrant.  When an untaxed whiskey was found, the ensuing seizure would encompass the whiskey plus the whole property that contained it.  If the barrel was strapped to a mule or carried in a wagon en-route, it included the mule or the wagon and horses. If in a house, then the house and lands. Possession was de-facto evidence of guilt.  If someone was charged with failure to pay the tax, that person had to travel hundreds of miles to be tried, the expenses for which, he must himself pay.  That’s another reason why we have a Declaration of Independence.

In response, the farmers began organizing.  Like the Regulators before them, they initially sent petitions to government, asking, in part, that whiskey be accepted as payment of the taxes.  It wouldn’t be seen as fair, but it would make payment possible.  Hamilton refused, telling Congress that he no longer believed that the westerners didn’t have enough money. Not being able to afford the tax is no excuse, he said.

As criticism and concerns grew, Hamilton defended his application of the right to use taxes (or any legislation) to attack political enemies.  In response to concerns from Congress, he suggested that the westerners were lazy, drunk, hillbillies who were a drag on the entire country.  He wrote, “if it should tend to diminish the consumption of it, such an effect would be equally favorable to the agriculture, to the economy, to the morals and to the health of the society.”   As Hamilton was known to love his wine, and have no morals, the hypocrisy was evident.

This was the fist time that the new national government admitted to using legislation to force citizens to let go of a political vision of liberty and a democratic view of government in favor of forced subjugation to the all-powerful authority of the State.   Hamilton’s ideal aristocratic government could regulate, whether directly or indirectly, every area of its subjects’ (property) lives using the threat of America’s vast military might.  It would soon have ample examples of government’s willingness to honor its threats.  This would be political theater for his wealthy friends, cementing them to the union and distancing them from the States.

Throughout the western regions of the new country, from Massachusetts to Georgia, the culture was so different from that of the east that it was impossible to merge them into one culture, which was Hamilton’s driving ambition.  Many of his Federalist Papers spoke of the dangers of factions.  This is the factionalism that worried him.  The Nationalists were so outnumbered by those who valued liberty, that if the desired and expanded voter enfranchisement were to be realized before the people could be brought under the control of the new government, his dream of an aristocracy, with him at the caesar, was doomed.

People in western regions believed in self-governance.  They didn’t like any government authority, but if any form of government was desired, its authority should be as local as possible, as minimal as reason could allow, and established by the people to fulfill specific needs.  The need might be a public road, a community well, or messengers to take mail to nearby towns.  These things can be addressed through community cooperation.  Government must not serve one portion of the people more favorably than another, which is the essence of the Jeffersonian view. For them, government didn’t need fancy buildings or expensive stationery for every member of congress who received what were perceived as Outlandish salaries.  At a time when $120.00 per year was a typical wage for a male worker, the president received a salary of $25,000.00.

In the west, the people WERE the government. If a town wanted a gazebo, the townspeople gathered to build one.  The men and older boys milled the lumber and constructed the gazebo while the ladies brought food to feed the whole party.  If a neighbor needed a house or a barn, his neighbors organized a house/barn raising using the same esprit de corps.  If an injury or illness prevented someone from plowing his field, his neighbors plowed the fields while he recovered.  If a flood or tornado destroyed home and crops, the family would still be fed and would have help rebuilding their house.  Money wasn’t the focus of life.  Quality of life was everything.  Community was essential.  Helping people directly rather than indirectly was important.  People were valuable assets.  Relationships were valuable means of exchange.  Quantity of money was irrelevant.  Quality of relationships, not money, and not even whiskey, was the social glue.  Whiskey only allowed them to trade when they needed money to buy essentials (such as salt for preservation) that wasn’t available to them otherwise, and to pay taxes.  

The westerners looked at easterners with little understanding.  Just as the earlier Iroquois looked at all white men as living lives as slaves, those farmers in the west now saw easterners in the same light.  That’s why they kept insisting that their cause was not about taxes, but it was about protecting liberty (freedom).  

The freedom they were protecting was not limited to their right to distill whiskey, which is a rather insulting explanation that has been handed down to us.  Their idea of liberty extended to their right to be independent people, to be self-sufficient, to be allowed to remain free-thinking, to be allowed to honor their ethics, to be equal to any other citizen under the law, and to pursue happiness in ways they themselves responsibly  and peresonally chose.  The ideas in the Declaration of Independence were real.  The words had vivid and understandable meanings. Men in these areas had been forced to fight in the War of Independence, and they believed that these ideals were their guarantee. They expected government to support the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Wealthy easterners, on the other hand, were growing in their financial prosperity, especially since the Whiskey Act not only transferred some of their taxes to the west, but it brought increased tariffs that allowed them to raise their prices to make more profits, blaming the increased prices on the tarriffs.  They certainly didn’t want equality because they were already super-equal.  For them, equality under the law was a menacing threat.  

As easterners read the sensationalized newspaper accounts that told of over-imbibing miscreants who were trying to overthrow their government and were refusing to pay just taxes, they began to demand action from THEIR government.  The all-powerful government that they had been promised with ratification of the Constitution would protect government’s creditors and their rigid class system, no matter what the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution itself said.

The farmers and artisans of the west were not poor.  They simply didn’t have specie.  There is a world of difference.  They had land and they were able to produce most of what they needed from that land, or barter it for essentials that could not be produced by themselves.  For them, the only visible purpose of the national government was to force them to pay taxes in a foreign currency.  

As it was with Shays Rebellion after the establishment of the secretly unlawful Massachusetts government, the newly formed national government needed its own expensive buildings and ludicrous salaries for pseudo kings, inspectors, tax collectors, armies, navies, sheriffs, constables, prisons, as well as judges and justices of the peace that didn’t serve the peace.  Southerners did not forget the additional cost of paying for New England’s war debt even though their own portions had been nearly paid before the assumption of states’ debts, thus raising taxes.  Add to that the expenses heaped upon them by the new Tax Act, that favored the wealthy in the east, and they had reason to feel abused.  

Locals were left wondering how to get the foreign currency to pay increased expenses and taxes.  This presented a problem.  They had no cash with which to pay a bond that allowed them to sell whiskey before paying the tax.  Large distilleries in the east could pay such a bond using no-longer-worthless scraps of paper they fraudulently obtained.  They couldn’t sell the whiskey because they had to pay the tax at the distant tax office before the whiskey could be moved from the building.  If cash could not be found, taxes couldn’t be paid and their land would be seized.  Selling their land to pay the taxes was selling their freedom and ability to survive.  Selling their labor to a factory in the east, as Hamilton suggested, was an unbearable assault to liberty itself.  

For them, taxes paid for nothing but the accouterments of corruption.  Government didn’t even pretend to serve them. It only imposed taxes.  For them, the law was more harsh and cruel than any imposed under Britain’s rule.  They watched with horror as their freedom evaporated.

Hamilton understood the problem well, as did Washington.  Washington himself spent years in Western Pennsylvania during his military career.  He was intimately acquainted with the area.  He personally oversaw the building of Fort Necessity and the road to it.  That’s where he started the French and Indian War that sparked the Seven Years War�"the first true world war. Washington certainly knew the value of whiskey as currency.

Hamilton, however, had a vision that he believed in.

In his “Report on Manufactures”, delivered to Congress in 1791, he expresses his understanding that nothing but wealth and greed will give a man happiness, and in this way, unite the fractured country.  

In his report, he suggests how the moneyless farmer should come up with the money to pay taxes and increase his wealth.  He should put his wife and daughters to more efficient use.  If America would adopt Britain’s view of manufacturing, even children “of a very tender age”, who now contribute nothing of value to society and are often a drain, are put into productive use to society through factory work that continues night and day.  In this way, the farm can be more productive because women and children are not raising sheep, spinning wool or cotton, weaving their own cloth, and making their own clothes (which was part of the joy of the self-respecting agrarian lifestyle).  When they work in factories, they will earn money to buy such things, which can be more cheaply made by machines.  He held up the factories of England as an example of how wonderful it is to see women and very young children working in factories night and day.

Furthermore, he says, manufacturing creates demand (greed) for things unheard of or even impractical.  “The bowels as well as the surface of the earth are ransacked for articles which were before neglected. Animals, Plants and Minerals acquire an utility and value, which were before unexplored.”  (Underline added for emphasis.)

Hamilton was certain that if he could force people off their land, something that the western farmers and artisans (not to mention the Indians) were unwilling to voluntarily do, they would have no choice but to look for work in factories.  Then greed would naturally take over, ideas of freedom would evaporate, new habits would be established in the land, and through the use of money, people would become of one mind.  This way, they would be easier to govern and government would be safe from them.

No one who has read his report can doubt Hamilton’s brilliance or the darkness and contempt with which he viewed humanity at large. His dishonesty stands in stark contrast to all that anyone considers honest.

Hamilton, who loved history when it could be used to his advantage, was taking his cues from Christianity.  It evolved from its many fragmented forms to the one favored by Americans today in spite of its many variations.  Violence and corruption of principles brought it to power.  He was acutely aware that the Inquisitions were still in progress in Spain.  Heretics died brutal public deaths under the watchful eye of the local Inquisitor.  The punishment for heresy had to be so extreme that fear would force compliance throughout the region.  Hamilton loved using force.

Throughout the earlier Inquisitions, the pope’s armies established roadblocks to search wagons and bundles, and they searched homes to root out heretics who were suspected of having committed “thought-crimes”.  Inspectors were Hamilton’s thought police.  He sent them out into the countryside to advise him on what was happening in response to his Whiskey Tax.  They reported to him that not only were whiskey taxes not being paid, but an ominous meeting had been held in Pittsburgh.  That meeting resulted in the publication of the following in the Pittsburgh Gazette:

“[any person] who had accepted or might accept an office under Congress, in order to carry [the whiskey tax] into effect, should be considered as inimical to the interests of the country; and recommending to the citizens of Washington County to treat every person who had accepted or might thereafter accept any such office, with contempt, and absolutely to refuse all kind of communication or intercourse with the officers, and to withhold from them all aid, support, or comfort.

These words, Hamilton argued to Washington, while stirring his passion for a military response, are acts of obstruction.  “The operation, or what is the same thing, the execution of a law, cannot be obstructed after it has been constitutionally enacted, without illegality and crime.”  (Even though is was unconstitutional thus illegal and government’s crime.)

This publication was, according to Hamilton, “vindictive”, and “dangerous.  Even more worrisome was the growing nature of the problem.  People were electing “very influential individuals” to negotiate with Congress as one voice.  This, for Hamilton, was nothing less than the establishment of a competing government.  There were even rumors of secession!

Hamilton went to the Attorney General to get indictments against them, but he was told that such meetings do not constitute an indictable offense.  He did manage to get indictments against two who were involved in what was described as a riot, but the locals came to their defense, testifying that there had been a mistake and the wrong people were arrested.  

This, the exasperated Hamilton said, frustrated every attempt to use punishment to have the examples he needed.  The absence of such examples, Hamilton complained to Washington, made tax collection more difficult and allowed the movement to spread, endangering the nation.

Having no success with the attorney general, Hamilton wrote several drafts of a Proclamation he wanted the president to issue, “earnestly admonishing and exhorting all persons whom it might concern to refrain and desist from all unlawful combinations and proceedings whatsoever, having for object, or tending, to obstruct the operation of the laws aforesaid”. Secretary of State Jefferson, reminded Washington that kings make proclamations, and such a letter would make matters worse.

When Washington was unwilling to use military force, Hamilton wrote the governor of Pennsylvania, urging him to do so.  The governor refused, knowing that military action would bring about a civil war in his nation.  Hamilton wrote back about the importance of his fulfilling his constitutional responsibility to punish offenders.

Disturbances continued for three years.  Hamilton, increasingly irritated, kept at Washington to put together a military force.  He assured him that he could use “executive power” to circumvent Congress.  That, he insisted, was “implied” in the Constitution.

He began writing letters that were published in the eastern newspapers under the pseudonym of Tully.  The purpose of the letters was to alarm and infuriate eastern readers.  In them, he painted the protesters in the most insulting and disparaging light, accusing them of distracting people from the real issue.  It is not about liberty (freedom), Hamilton as Tully insisted.  It’s about a sly, artful, and scheming people who want to bring down YOUR government.

When, thanks to his letters and the fact that the nationalists owned the newspapers, concern grew enough, Hamilton finally convinced Washington to lead 12,950 men into western Pennsylvania to put down the rebellion, presenting a clear and graphic picture about who was in charge.  This is the first and only time that a sitting president led troops to battle.  That the Secretary of the Treasury accompanied him and intended to oversee the entire operation is also otherwise unheard of.  The president led the troops as far as Bedford, Pennsylvania before returning to Philadelphia.  Hamilton, of course, heralded his own accompaniment of the great General Washington. When Washington returned home, Hamilton took charge of the entire affair.

Historian William Hogland writes about what happened next.  Contrary to provisions in the Constitution, and “Authorized neither by warrants nor by any resolution of Congress, federal troops rousted from beds, rounded up, and detained on no charge hundreds of people against whom the executive branch knew it had no evidence. Officers administered warrantless searches and seizures of property and subjected detainees to harsh conditions and terrorizing interrogation. Some victims were told they'd be hanged unless they gave false testimony against the elected officials who had vainly opposed this and other executive-branch policies and operations. …

“Then, (months later�"purposely) in the winter, … detainees were marched almost 400 miles to the capital, poorly shod and clothed, under the authority of an officer well-known by his superiors for the pleasure he took in denigrating prisoners. On arrival (in Philadelphia), the suspects were paraded in the streets as victory trophies, then imprisoned under conditions that were even more extreme than normal. Some still hadn’t been charged with a crime. Others had been charged only because the presiding federal judge (testified that he)… felt intimidated by the federal troops and allowed indictments on what he later said he considered insufficient evidence.”

Papers in the east wrote about the end of the “rebellion” with great zeal and embellishment.   The Washington/Hamilton administration publicly lauded the success of its mission, thus putting the hearts of the wealthy creditor-class at peace.  

But the Washington/Hamilton administration failed to report that the effort had been a very expensive and largely wasted effort. The whiskey excise remained difficult to collect, and many westerners continued to refuse to pay the tax.  It was impossible to find or keep inspectors and judges in the area after the military incursion.  There would be no more anonymous letters about non-compliance in the east. No one in government would bring up the failure, or cause the wealthy, who were now assured that the military of the United States of America was at their beck and call, were now firmly backing the new government, sure that government existed to serve them alone.

Hamilton had staged a great theatrical event at taxpayer expense.  It played out with great fanfare.  His wealthy friends who had profited greatly from his unequal tax policies were grateful, but his undying belief that extreme public violence would compel obedience was frustrated.  His actions had merely strengthened the hand of his enemies.  He resigned the event to history, calling it the Whiskey Rebellion.  It would be more aptly named, “Hamilton’s Insanity”.  

The violence could easily have been avoided by changing the source of revenue to a more equitable tax that affected the entire population equally.  He could have instituted a sales tax or a land tax.  He could have authorized the sale of massive regions of uninhabited land that was under the control of the Department of the Treasury.  Higher export taxes may have solved the problem, though his wealthy friends wouldn’t tolerate them.  These things didn’t suit Hamilton’s agenda or ambition.  They would not require the use of the violence that put his hero, Julius Caesar, on the throne.  Nor did they suit the creditor class, upon whom the rest of his plan depended.

The importance of the Whiskey Rebellion is overlooked by high school American history textbooks.  It is usually little more than a sentence.  It is no wonder.  The Whiskey Rebellion marks the point where the national government officially began representing the interests of the wealthy.  It also marks the point where government began sanctioning the use of lies, be they overt, covert, or the art of truthiness, to distort the nature of reality in order to achieve political objectives.

In the end, only two people were convicted.  They were sentenced to hang, but Washington quietly pardoned everyone involved, thus ensuring a silent end to the whole ugly matter.

The Whiskey Rebellion, whatever you may have been told about it, was never a matter of people refusing to pay taxes, any more than the Shays-like rebellions were about taxes.  These protests stood for an important underlying principle: freedom, integrity, and decency.

To call the affair  “The Whiskey Rebellion”, blaming the victims of previously unthinkable government abuse before resigning the whole event to history is to do a great disservice to history itself, thus ourselves.  If we do not know the truth about our own history, we cannot fix what is broken, and we are doomed to repeat it.

History is usually written by the victor.  In this case, early American history was written by those who fear freedom, who revere inequality, and who love the very thing that is threatening humankind’s survival today.  The creators of our history have blinded us to what we have become.


 
Chapter 4F
The last of the Hamilton Machinations
And the widening of the crack in the Constitutional Dam



You may be a king or a little street sweeper,
but sooner or later you dance with the reaper!
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey



In spite of the Washington administration’s claims of great success in the Whiskey Rebellion, it had done a lot of damage.  Hamilton caused an irreparable break in the Federalist Party.  Instead of squashing ideas of equality and liberty, as Hamilton intended, it excited them and fanned the flames, just as the same ideas grew after the Shays Rebellion.  Though papers in the east saw nothing but good in the smack-down of the rebels, the westerners themselves, knowing how badly they had been abused, began organizing in earnest.  Their cause was joined by many more in the east who had lost their voice in a government that now viewed them as enemies of the State.

After the Whiskey Rebellion, farmers, commoners, and artisans in western regions, who had already been organizing, turned their efforts to turning themselves into a national political party called, The Democratic-Republican Party. Madison was outraged by the treachery shown by the Federalists when the Federalist Congress established an unconstitutional national bank and assumed States’ debts.  He became a leader in the new political party.   

Jefferson, who would not allow himself to be a part of any political party, agreed with most of their positions, and he was considered a leader, or at least a mentor.  There may not have been people shooting at one another, but from the looks of the newspapers, the country was at war.  Violence is violence.  It matters not the choice of weapons.  

Such political fights are the stuff of Hamilton’s ambition, but his future would take a downward spiral.  He was accused by Congress of overstepping his authority by borrowing money without congressional consent.

In his defense, he wrote to Congress: “It was conceived by the Secretary of the Treasury to be a clear principle, resulting from the spirit of the act constituting the Treasury Department, and from the several provisions of that act, collectively considered… It was also conceived by him to be, though a less clear principle, one most agreeable to the true spirit of the constitution of the Department…”

When asked for copies of the authority that caused him to think that he could act outside of the law, he refused, citing an unheard of power called “Executive Privilege”.  This was another unenumerated “implied” power he simply invented into existence.  

He writes, “The proper inquiry for the legislature must be, whether the laws have been duly executed or not;�"If they have been duly executed, the question of sufficiency or deficiency of authority, from the President to his agent, must be, to the legislature, immaterial and irrelevant.  The question must, then, be a matter purely between the President and the agent, not examinable by the legislature, without interfering with the province of the chief magistrate, to whom alone the responsibility is.”

When that didn’t work, he claimed that the authority was not written, but was verbal, and given in several personal meetings with the president.  He began a letter writing campaign to the president, encouraging Washington to publicly defend him.  The president, however, said he had no such memories, except those of giving him authority to act within the law.

He resigned his office, staying long enough for Congress to complete its probe.  His resignation was probably under pressure from Washington, who offered him the post of Inspector General of the Army before Washington returned home to his beloved Mt. Vernon, a defeated man.

John Adams became the second president, and though he had no respect for Hamilton, he felt forced to make use of him. Adams kept Washington’s staff and cabinet.  Perhaps he tried to maintain continuity, no one knows, but his staff, during Adams extended absences, used to taking instruction from Hamilton, continued to go to him for advice.  

From the background, Hamilton heartily supported the Alien and Sedition Acts that made it a serious offense to criticize the president or Congress, while going out of its way to exclude Vice President Thomas Jefferson from its protection.   When public opinion was so wildly against it that his own party began turning against him, he changed his view. Hamilton also changed his position on immigration.  In his “Report on Manufactures”, he advocated encouraging immigration to gather workers who would increase commerce.  Now he encouraged the Alien Acts.  He hated the immigrating French with their evil ideas about democracy and equality and their thoughts about the Enlightenment.  He believed that they were shifting the demographics further into what was a dangerous Democratic-Republican direction.   

Even President Adams found himself in one of Hamilton’s many whirlwinds.  Hamilton organized the Federalists in Congress, who pushed then to stir up public opinion to get Adams to go to war against France.  Adams, on the other hand, was trying to avoid a war with France.  America couldn’t afford another war.  It was still paying for the last one.

Hamilton wanted to personally take the army to conquer New Orleans, thus establish himself as a great hero.  He could then leverage that reputation into the presidency, as his hero Julius Caesar had done.  

Adams, eager to avoid a war that America couldn’t afford and probably couldn’t win, and not trusting Hamilton’s ambitious nature in the slightest, managed to find peace in spite of Hamilton’s machinations and protestations.  

Disgusted by Adams, Hamilton began working to ensure that Adams would not be reelected for a second term.  He preferred another Federalist for the top post.  Though his intent was to save the union from “the fangs of Jefferson”, his meddling backfired.  The Federalists lost both the top seats, which is how the hated Thomas Jefferson became our third president and an even more hated nemesis, Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr became Vice President, forcing Hamilton to swing Federalist votes to Jefferson as the lesser of two evils.

With Jefferson as president and Hamilton out of the national government, Hamilton looked for ways to restore the monarchic vision that had to be implemented if there was ever to be a Caesar on the throne.  He started working to establish “The Christian Constitutional Society”.  In an 1802 letter to Rev. James Bayard, he describes a devious method that might put an end to the Democratic-Republican Party.

In that letter, he wrote of himself:  “Yet it is well that it should be perfectly understood by the truly sound part of the Federalists that there do, in fact, exist intrigues (meaning devious schemes) in good earnest between several individuals not unimportant of the federal party (himself & Morris), and the person in question, (himself) which are bottomed upon motives and views by no means auspicious to the real welfare of the country.” (underline added for emphasis.)

“Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion (emotions). This is a truth well understood by our adversaries, who have practiced upon it with no small benefit to their cause; for at the very moment they are eulogizing the reason of men, and professing to appeal only to that faculty, they are courting the strongest and most active passion of the human heart, vanity!”  For him, vanity is the unacceptible thought that a person should be allowed to think for himself.  Those who do that discover an awareness that ALL are created equal under the law, that money doesn’t change the essential equality of a man, and that freedom is possible in a land where governments, being of, by, and for the people, serve everyone, not just the wealthy. That an animal would declare itself to be HIS equal was unthinkable and offensive.  Something needed to be done about that.

He proceeds to outline a plan to use lies and stealth in an unholy mind-war, where Christianity would be conflated so closely with the now destroyed Constitution that the people would be unable to see the difference between the Constitution and the governbment. He writes: “that, to win the former (the animals) to our side, we must renounce our principles … and unite in corrupting public opinion till it becomes fit for nothing but mischief”, using methods such as, in a sound and stable order of things, ought not to exist.  (underline added). He continues to say that his proposed society cannot achieve its full effects “without some deviations from what … we have maintained to be right (moral). But in determining upon the propriety of the deviations, we must consider whether it be possible for us to succeed, without, in some degree, employing the weapons which have been employed against us.” (A lie.  He accuses his opponents of using his own tactics.)

As the letter suggests, his plan was to use the pulpit as a weapon.  In his opinoin, those who do not know how to use reason (as, he alleges, uneducated farmers don’t) take instructions from the pulpit.  So by giving instructions with heavy donations to the churches, their ministers, and their causes, while cloaking the Constitutionalist societies with a patently false façade of concern about Christian charity, and embracing it with American Patriotism, the Federalists would receive the support of Christians in rural areas that were then staunch freedom-lovers.  The Christian Constitutional Society would then stand for that which Christianity itself stood against, but the conflict would not be perceptible because animals do not reason well enough to see it.  It was a dastardly plan!

In this way, the separation of church and state would dissolve, as it must in Hamilton’s utopia.  The common animals would not know that they were using Christianity as a political “weapon” against the adversaries of a monarchy, nor would they know that they were destroying their own freedom in the process.  It was perfect!  

Corrupting the minds of church leaders and congregations, by falsely presenting wealthy Federalist extremists as humble, devout, and philanthropic people of faith who would defend their religion by incorporating it into government, Federalists would offer free pamphlets and write anonymous newspaper articles about the need for Christian charity.  (Unspoken in the letter:  They would do this without saying that charity was a need that their own monetary policies had actually created.)  This would obviously mask the reason for the need for the charity and envelop it in a cloud of holiness and good “feelings”.  They would gently transfer the allegiance of the Christians to the State, that would act as God itself, the god Hamilton believed was the only real god, sitting on a throne he intended to occupy.

One can easily assume that by emphasizing the teachings of the Biblical Paul, he would gain the full support of Christians who would no longer be able to understand that they were contradicting their own messiah’s teachings.  It would do as the Holy Roman Empire had done.

Money would simultaneously calm the “jealousies” of the rural inhabitants who were angry about how they were being treated by men of wealth who were intentionally instigating the insurrections that always transferred greater wealth and power to the State.  

Anyone thoroughly familiar with Hamilton’s methods and morals, as well as the Bible can see where Hamilton was going with his Christian Constitutional Society.  He and his friends would give them reasons to be grateful for the poverty that his financial plan would actually and intentionally create and imprison them in.   He could use Paul’s instruction in Romans 13 to use the churches to compel silent obedience to the state no matter how horrendous its offenses against themselves:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. … For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.  Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Understanding Hamilton’s love of the “implied Law of Nations”, with its laws that can never be written down but can only be revealed or divined, and then only divined by the courts or a monarch, any of which who could always accept bribes, means that he is explaining the workings of an implied God, a god that is superior to any other.  For Hamilton, the State was god and if he could pull it off, he would be that God.

If he could manage to pull it off, it would be his greatest and most ingenious achievement.  It was, by far, his best joke.  

Hamilton died before he could get his Christian Constitutionalist Society completely off the ground, but the idea didn’t die with Hamilton.  

This is exactly what happened when our Congress began passing laws respecting establishments of religions.  Using taxpayer dollars rather than their own, politicians seeking votes bought the clergy and church-goers in order to promulgate a patriotic message it wanted spread throughout the nation�"a message that pastors could spread better than politicians because pastors can use the threat of Hell as a weapon.  It’s why we now live in a country where we have a Constitutional mandate stipulating that Congress can pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, so in order to honor that mandate, Congress is forced to pass laws respecting establishments of religion.

Hamilton’s  idea grew, if not the society specifically, and it became embedded in our culture and is the root cause of the “Culture War” that, having been declared in the 1980s, still exists today.  Though the man is no longer in power, his ideas continued to inspire corruption.

Hamilton’s hopes for fame and glory died forever when Jefferson signed the treaty that bought New Orleans and the Northwest Territory from France.  He had already lost his leadership role in the Federalist Party because the party shattered as a result of his many shenanigans. He cost the Federalists the presidency, the Vice Presidency, and two years later, both houses of Congress.  

Peace descended upon the land.  There was no war in sight to lift him to glory.  Jefferson removed all deposits from the First Bank of the United States and would let the charter expire.  The wildly unpopular Alien and Sedition Acts that doomed the once glorious and powerful Federalist Party were repealed.  Gone also was the whiskey tax.  Jefferson’s egalitarian view was growing and all states were working on expanding voter enfranchisement.  Of this change in the cultural tide, Hamilton wrote, “Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me.”  

Jefferson tried to turn the government back to its founding principles, but, thanks to harsh and corrupt economic policies, too many had moved to cities and become dependent on money for their survival.  The people were no longer largely self-sufficient.  He tried to change the tax structure back to one that would support the people using import and export taxes.  The effort was a major failure.  With great sadness, he wrote: “When this government was first established, it was possible to have kept it going on true principles, but the contracted, English, halflettered ideas of Hamilton destroyed that hope in the bud. We can pay off his debt in 15 years: but we can never get rid of his financial system.”

When Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel in New Jersey (because such things were illegal in New York), Hamilton accepted.  Telling his wife that he had no intention of firing back, he said his goodbyes and put his affairs in as much order as he could.  He committed suicide by duel.

He lived for 30 hours after the duel.  Probably to appease his devoutly religious wife, and in spite of his outspoken disdain for the Christian religion, he requested last rights.  This was initially denied because both dueling and suicide were mortal sins. But the story goes that right before his death, the church capitulated and last rights were given, allowing him the right of a Christian burial.  This, according to Christian tradition, assured Hamilton’s wife of his rightful place in Heaven.

At his death, it was discovered that he was nearly bankrupt.  His remaining friends and supporters were aghast.  His self-portrayal as a wealthy aristocrat was all theater.  His wife and eight children would depend on the charity of her family to survive.

Though Hamilton died in the flesh, his ghost seems to have survived.  Those who held his memory dear were emboldened. They kept his vision of a despotic aristocratic government alive and prospering.


 Chapter 14G
The Snake Coils Before it Bites
Marbury v. Madison

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
9th Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
10th Amendment


The 9th and 10th Amendments form the cornerstone of what was once our constitutional republic.  They funda-mentally reversed the order of the power hierarchy that existed in Britain’s feudal model of government that the nationalists loved so much.  America’s Constitutional government was the opposite of feudalism. It placed all power in the voters (few that they were at the time) at the top of a reversed pyramid.  It gave the least power to the national government in the bottom-most point, and it intentionally made the executive the weakest branch of government.  States, that represented the people, were in the middle.  That is what made the American experiment so revolutionary in the eyes of the world.  The Constitution was both a model of government and a unique, power-sharing treaty among many sovereign nations that are today called States.  The Constitution bound the government of limited powers and restricted its freedoms while empowering the people and guaranteeing their freedoms.  This was unheard of in European civilization.

The American Constitutional government was modeled along the lines of the system in use in the ancient Iroquois Confederation, and if left unhampered, would likely have evolved in that direction to the point where leaders would again serve the people rather than the people serve government and its own monied interests.

As voter enfranchisement grew in popularity, and with voter restrictions being lifted, the voice of the privileged few became less audible.  Voter enfranchisement caused another wave of alarm to ring throughout the aristocracy.  The majority now had political power.  Something needed to be done to limit what the voters could do with their newfound power.

The only possible way to limit the power of the common people was to destroy their precious and beloved Constitution.  Since the passage of the Bill of Rights, and the ascension of Jefferson to the presidency, it seemed unassailable.   The pesky 9th and 10th amendments put government in a lock box that the Jefferson and Madison administrations carefully guarded.  The 10th Amendment prevented Congress from making laws that the aristocracy wanted.  It had to go. In fact, the entire Constitution had to go and government needed to return to feudalism, where the wealthy lords of the established aristocracy had indomitable power and perpetual class superiority.  The animals must never be allowed to become human.

The 10th Amendment meant that the voters controlled their federal government and could, using Article V of the Constitution, amend the Constitution to modify its powers whenever it suited the desires of the majority of the people in three-quarters of the States.   It was the peoples’ amendment.  It was the curse on the wealthy and their greatest fear.

Without the Bill of Rights with its 9th and 10th Amendments in force, the pyramid of power could be reversed.  It could become a right-side-up pyramid with the government holding all power, and the common people holding none.  In that type of structure, the government is all-powerful, but only for as long as it can get away with it.  It is and was thought that if this were in effect in America, because of America’s vast geographical area, there would be nothing, short of an unwinnable violent revolution, that the people could do about it.  Because of a now-centralized military, government directed force could contain any attempt at reclaiming government and no member of a drafted military could refused to stand in its defense, under penalty of death.  This is exactly what Hamilton fought for.

In the specific type of right side up pyramid that the Federalists wanted, the people cannot use Article V of the Constitution to modify government powers because that would be an anathema to the aristocrat’s government.  That is what the Federalists needed, and that could only happen if the Constitution were voided.

Under the power paradigm of the government at the top, laws and even amendments can be ignored or overturned by the courts, or by the legislature that is controlled by the courts, so as to keep the people out of the way.  Without the Bill of Rights with its 9th and 10th Amendments, the people are owned by the government, and are its chattels that are called subjects, like British are subjects of the monarch.

The only way for the new American pyramid of power to reverse the flow of power, is for one or more branches of the government to corrupt the process and violate the constitution in order to assume more power than is authorized (enumerated in the constitution), as it did in the Whiskey Rebellion and the assumption of States’ debts with its First Bank of the United States.  Without that, it would be impossible.  If it were to overturn the Constitution and it could get away with it, it would be nothing short of a coup d’état.

The first inkling that there actually was a coup d’état in the works arrived in 1803 with a Supreme Court decision called Marbury v. Madison.  That decision dealt with fallout from the presidential election of 1800.

The election of 1800 was a fierce battle.  Thanks to Alexander Hamilton, John Adams lost his bid for re-election and Adams was furious.  To place his heavy Federalist, pro-aristocracy footprint on the government that had forced him out, the lame duck congress added 58 new judgeships, all of which went to Nationalists.  The night before Jefferson took office, Secretary of State John Marshall affixed the seal to the appointments, sent out the sixteen circuit court appointments, but did not issue the 42 appointments for Justices of the Peace.   These were left on his desk, waiting to be found by his successor, James Madison.  The trap was set.  Newly inaugurated President Jefferson, upon being informed of the undelivered appointments, ordered their delivery stopped.  The trap sprung.

Only one of the affected would-be justices of the peace went to the Supreme Court that had been given authority to hear such cases via the Federalists’ unconstitutional Judiciary Act 1789.  That person was William Marbury, who was to have been the Justice of the Peace for the seat of government�"Washington, DC.  (He is also the same Marbury that embezzled millions from the Second Bank of the United States, as you will read about later in this chapter.)

Marbury petitioned the Court to force the new Secretary of State to deliver the documents. The Court, with the same John Marshal at its head, found in a unanimous (4-0) decision that Madison's refusal to deliver the commission was both illegal and remediable using the courts.

Evenso, the Court stopped short of compelling Madison to hand over Marbury's commission.  Instead, it held that the provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that enabled Marbury to bring his claim to the Supreme Court, was itself unconstitutional, since it extended the Court's power well beyond that which Article III of the Constitution established. The petition was therefore denied.

On its surface, that doesn’t initially sound so bad.  The court affirmed the Constitution as the law of the land and affirmed that the court did not have the constitutional authority to act in the case.  But it went much farther than that.  It went into matters of law that were not even before it.  Taking an idea right out of Hamilton’s Rutgers v. Waddington case, it decreed a new doctrine:

It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department
to say what the law is.

In true Federalist fashion, and in violation of their oaths of office, the Court simply assumed the unenumerated power to shred the Constitution.  It simply declared itself to be above the legislature, above the people, and at the head of government, just as the old Massachusetts government declared itself to be a lawful government, and the New York mayor’s court attempted to do.  But the Court didn’t immediately put that newfound power to use. It left that power on a back  burner�"waiting for the right time to make its stand.

As you know by now, nowhere in the Constitution does the Judiciary have that power.  At no time was it intended for the judiciary to have that power.  We fought a war to get rid of judicial review.  We have a 10th Amendment that prohibits any part of government from assuming powers not enumerated in the Constitution.  

President Jefferson was furious.  He nudged Congress to start impeaching the justices for violations of their oaths of office.  He started with Justice Chase who had a reputation of bad behavior and putting his opinions above the law.   If he could impeach Chase easily, which he should have been able to do, other Federalist judges, notably Chief Justice John Marshall who set up the scheme, would probably follow.

“In March, 1805, when Chase's trial began in the United States Senate, the Democratic-Republicans were in control of the government. But much to everyone’s surprise, Chase kept his post, thanks largely to Vice President Aaron Burr. Burr was wanted for the shooting of Alexander Hamilton, but he was immune from prosecution in Washington, D.C., and presiding over an impeachment was his duty as vice president.”

He gave Chase's lawyer, Luther Martin, wide latitude.  In short, Burr help acquit Chase.

If Jefferson was angered to find his impeachment plans foiled, Chase was relieved�"as was Chief Justice Marshall. When Aaron Burr was tried for treason two years later, Marshall traveled to Richmond, Virginia to preside over the case.  

In his instructions to the jury, he informed them that they were to exclude testimony "relative to the conduct or declarations of the prisoner elsewhere and subsequent to the transaction on Blennerhassett's Island."  It only took minutes for the jury to issue an unconventional verdict saying, “"We, of the jury, say that Aaron Burr is not proved to be guilty under the indictment by any evidence submitted to us; we therefore find him not guilty."   When Marshall threw out all the evidence, the jury could do nothing other than acquit an obviously guilty man.  Chief Justice Marshall had repaid the debt owed him four years earlier when Burr saved Marshall’s job.

During the Constitutional debate, the anti-Federalists had issued loud and clear warnings about how an out of control and uncheckable judiciary could establish itself if the current 10th Amendment prohibiting that was not added to the proposed Constitution.  They warned: “Perhaps nothing could have been better conceived to facilitate the abolition of the state governments than the constitution of the judicial. They will be able to extend the limits of the general government gradually, and by insensible degrees, and to accommodate themselves to the temper of the people. Their decisions on the meaning of the constitution will commonly take place in cases which arise between individuals, with which the public will not be generally acquainted. One adjudication will form a precedent to the next, and this to a following one. These cases will immediately affect individuals only, so that a series of determinations will probably take place before even the people will be informed of them.”  

Thomas Jefferson mourned the advent of judicial review in a letter to Abigail Adams: “But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."

Now the first three reasons given in the Declaration of Independence have been rejected.  Not only do the courts have the ability to make laws, and to refuse to assent to laws without its approval, but the people now have no representation in what is the Judiciary’s government.  

With Marbury v. Madison, the Federalist court took the first step in interrupting the flow of power.  The pyramid of power began to topple.  The court placed itself within the pyramid of power where it hadn’t been, but the people themselves didn’t know it.  It was, to most of those who even knew about it, an obscure decision where the court admitted that it didn’t have the power to overturn any constitutional provisions, even as it decreed an unconstitutional judicial doctrine saying that the Court makes the laws.    For someone committing treason against the United States of America, It was a brilliant move.  John Marshall’s chaotic opinion, and the earth-shattering one to follow years later, spoke in contradictions.  Say one thing but do the opposite.

The decision caused a break in the tracks on which the American train traveled.  Because of the Senate’s acquittal of Justice Chase, thus affirming judicial review, what happened next was predictable.  In fact, the train would go off the tracks and it would be a bloody mess.  The government of, by, and for the people would be its victim.

As seen in the image below, where the Bill of Rights gave us an upside down power pyramid, thanks to Marbury v. Madison, our current government reverses that power pyramid.  The dictatorial Supreme Court now crowns the top of the pyramid, whereas in the first diagram of the reversed pyramid, the court did not appear at all.  

The two legislative branches and the executive branch of government are now underneath and co-equal to one another, but inferior to the courts.  The people do not appear inside the pyramid at all.  

Any power that government allows the people to retain is indirect influence only, which is why politics has become so nasty.  Those with the most money to offer have the most influence.  (In the diagram below, SCOTUS means Supreme Court of the United States.)

CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT    DICTATORIAL GOVERNMENT
    







So how did our upside down pyramid, with the people retaining the most power that they could retain or allow to trickle down to government�"or  not�"become a right side up pyramid, topped by an all-powerful Supreme Court, and where the people are not even inside the power structure?  That’s a good question, and it has a very specific and documented answer.

The case that took away our Constitution and reformed our government into a feudal dictatorship under the control of the Court is called Mc Culloch v. Maryland.  The answer as to whether or not we, the people, have any guaranteed rights and freedoms by virtue of the Bill of Rights, thanks to judicial review, the answer is decidedly and unequivocally “NO”, anything in the written Constitution notwithstanding.  

In Mc Culloch v. Maryland, the court would rule on whether or not Maryland could impose a tax on a private commercial bank operating under an unconstitutional national charter with a branch within its borders.  Congress deemed the bank necessary because of the difficulties that arose from an unpopular and ill-timed declaration of war against England

The U.S. didn’t have the people, the money, or the ships to fight the War of 1812.  Jefferson tried to avoid becoming entangled in the ongoing war between England and France by asking for The Embargo Act of 1807. By eliminating exports, it brought loud protest from traders and industry. America  wasn’t ready to become involve in a war.  In fact, the U. S Navy did not possess a single ship of the line, as battleships of the day were called.

As hostilities loomed under the presidency of James Madison, Congress authorized a regular army of 35,000 men, but when the United States officially declared war in June 1812, the actual land force was less than 10,000 and nearly half of these soldiers were inexperienced recruits. The existing troops were spread out in small garrisons throughout the nation. The government planned to enhance this regular force with 50,000 volunteers and 100,000 militiamen, the latter to be provided by the states.

Resistance to the war was so strong in New England that the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to call up their militia in response to a request for troops.  Vermont followed suit the next year.  As the Americans planned to “liberate” Canada from the British, the plan was frustrated.  The New England Federalists, the bankers for the union, were so against it, they met in Hartford to conspire about how to get the New England states to secede from the union.  Thiswas a move so unpopular that when it became known, Federalists were forced to let go of the word Federalist to become Whigs, just as they had been forced to drop the word Nationalist in favor of the word Federalist that represented a government that they were against.

When Congress declared war, it failed to address the problem of how to pay for it. New England’s creditors weren’t willing to lend money to fund it.  They wanted the now-expired charter of the Bank of the United States renewed.  They would have been happy enough funding the war if the charter were renewed.  So too would the foreign nations have helped fund the war if the charter were renewed.  Foreign investors made up a majority of the shareholders of the Bank of the United States.

With the ongoing war between Britain and France along with the United States’ declaration of war, profitable trade with Europe came to an abrupt end.  Sea trade among the various states was too dangerous.  Goods had to be shipped by land, a far more expensive mode of travel.  Shortages of goods and increased costs of transportation raised the prices of goods, services, and labor.  

Exports, that would bring specie back into the country, had declined to $7 million (compared with $61 million the year before).    This decreased the customs duties that the government had been relying on.  Add to this the fact that private banks were printing far too much currency as they invested in mortgages on speculative land schemes.  Bubbles were created in various markets, most notably in real estate.  Inflation again eroded the value of all existing currency.

As happened in New England after the Revolutionary war, when the war of 1812 ended, trade took off.   Imported goods were suddenly far less expensive than inflated American goods.  Money was going out but little coming in.  Manufacturing facilities were unable to compete with cheaper imports and were closing.  Unemployment was at an all-time high.  Unemployment brought foreclosures of homes and businesses.

Bills authorizing a national bank was presented to President Madison several times.  These bills were never popular.  People hated banks that had literally stolen their freedoms from them.  Madison vetoed those that did make it out of Congress.

Finally, with the war over, the economy in shambles, poverty flowing out onto the streets, and wealthy bankers, merchants, traders and manufacturers in the east screaming bloody murder, the next president, James Monroe, agreed to another of the aristocrat’s national banks.

The first Bank of the United States had been exceptionally profitable for the few shareholders, even though inflation during Hamilton’s five-year tenure as Secretary of the Treasury was a whopping 72% , meaning that it didn’t offer much benefit to the many.  Inflation always benefits the few at the expense of the many.  Still, the next private bank, operating under the name of the Second Bank of the United States, was approved by Congress in 1816, and signed into law by President Monroe.  It opened its doors in January of 1817.

The second bank was so badly managed and under-funded that it exacerbated the problems around the country.  The first president, a former Secretary of the Navy, wasn’t the best choice as he had already declared bankruptcy.  Bad management allowed too much money to be printed.  He and William Marbury (yes, the same Marbury who participated in the scheme that gave us judicial review), along with a clerk, embezzled more than three million dollars from the Baltimore branch.  

The bank took things from bad to worse, as banks do.  They contracted the issuance of money and presented State’s banks their certificates, demanding payment in specie.  Those banks were using fractional reserve banking rules, as all do, so as the Second Bank of the United States knew, they didn’t have sufficient specie to cover the notes.  In an attempt to come up with the specie, State banks started calling in notes they were holding from other banks as well as foreclosing on mortgages that had become delinquent due to the post-war recession.  This caused a run on the banks. State and private banks closed, and America fell into a depression.

There was general outrage in the streets.  Renewal of a national bank was as much of a controversy between the rich and the poor as the issue of slavery would be between the north and the south a few decades later.

Public outrage caused many who had never been involved in politics before, to engage for the first time.  Two states tried to prohibit the bank branches from operating within their borders, and six others levied prohibitive taxes on the branches to discourage their operation.

Maryland was one of the states taking a stand.  It had a law requiring all private banks operating within its borders to print their currencies on state approved paper with its stamp on it.  Because the Bank of the United States (BUS) was a private bank no matter how misleading its name, the law called for the BUS to conform as other private banks were required to.  The BUS ignored the law and printed money on its own paper, causing heavy fines and penalties.

This all ended up in court in a case called Mc Culloch v. Maryland.  Maryland won the initial battle, and it won on appeal, but then it made its way to the infamous John Marshall’s Supreme Court, that had already assumed unlimited and uncheckable unconstitutional power to do as it wanted to do, but had been holding that power in check.  With a new and amenable president was in place, the time had come for the long-awaited and long-planned coup d’état.
 Chapter 14 H
Having been bitten, The Venom Kills



So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.
Apocalypse of Revelation 12:9



The question before the court was the same controversy that had been fought out so many times throughout the nation’s short history, and here it was again as if the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had never been ratified.  Were the anti-Federalists who were the actual Federalists, who successfully blocked ratification of the Constitution, and then again unless a Bill of Rights was attached, correct in insisting that the written Constitution binds the peoples’ government to the document, thus to the people, thereby guaranteeing their freedom?  Or would the aristocrats’ beloved-but-failed Nationalist version apply, where the Constitution became irrelevant the moment that it was ratified, because according to the implied Law of Nations, the Constitution created a legal person that consumed the States’ and peoples’ rights?  In this government framework, the States and the people were chained to government, thereby giving up their freedom.

In a rambling, nearly incoherent, deceptive, obfuscating, repetitive, and contradictory ruling that reads like the voice of a mad man channeling Alexander Hamilton himself, the ruling stated that the principle of the 10th Amendment is repugnant.  

The court said that once the nation was established through ratification, it became an autonomous sovereign legal person, and no one could deprive it of even a single one of its sovereign powers or rights.  In other words, as soon as it was ratified, the Constitution became irrelevant.  

In essence, it declared the Constitution unconstitutional because it was an infringement on the legal person’s natural rights, the rights of human beings or their State governments not withstanding.  At the point of ratification, the document ceased to be a contract, and government would, from that point forward, be “constituted” by its laws. (Hence the word constitution still applying.) Government’s laws are its constitution, and the court set about making some new laws to constitute the new government it set about creating.

Some of the relevant parts of the decree of the court include repealing the Bill of Rights.   It stated: “A law absolutely repugnant to another as entirely repeals that other as if express terms of repeal were used.”  

Meaning:
IF AN AMENDMENT IS DESIGNED TO “AMEND” OR CHANGE THE TERMS OF THE MAIN BODY OF A DOCUMENT, THE AMENDMENT IS REPEALED, NOT THE PART OF THE DOCUMENT THAT THE AMENDMENT INTENDED TO AMEND.     

It later re-emphasized that point when it said, “To have prescribed [via amendments] the means by which Government should, in all future time, execute its powers would have been to change entirely the character of the instrument and give it the properties of a legal code”.

IF AMENDMENTS ARE ALLOWED TO MODIFY GOVERNMENT POWER, THEN THE CONSTITUTION MEANS WHAT THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION SAYS, BUT IT DOES NOT MEAN WHAT THE UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION SAYS, THEREFORE THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION IS REPEALED.

This is interesting because the Constitution itself says that IT is “the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding”.  Furthermore, the 10th Amendment does not turn the Constitution into a legal code.  That is what the court is doing as it proclaims its unconstitutional dictum.  The 10th Amendment  simply presents limits on what government can do without first getting permission, that is granted through an amendment.  The court is using typical Hamiltonian thought and tactic.  Blame others for what you are doing.  Distract, distract, distract.  Lie, lie, lie.

The term “legal code” is a reference to the (hated by the aristocracy only) Napoleonic Code that was Napoleon’s attempt to end feudalism (an effort that caused the Napoleonic wars and caused the aristocrats to hate and fear Napoleon) .  His codes established procedures and requirements for all citizens. They provided equal treatment under the law for all citizens�"something that America is still unwilling to do in spite of its 14th Amendment.  They are an exhaustive set of laws that delved into every aspect of civil life, from marriage to adoption to various crimes. Yet they were written, which made them inspectable, whereas the Law of Nations can never be fully written or inspected by anyone.  Those laws are “revealed” to the court, as God’s laws are “revealed” to the priestcraft.

The code forbade privileges based on birth or wealth, guaranteed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs should go to the most qualified, not the most affluent.  It required judges to hear all cases brought before them�"something that our high court does not require of itself, and they required judges to rule consistent with the law�"something else that our judges are no longer required to do, and something that Mc Culloch v. Maryland would ensure.  

The Napoleonic Codes were an aristocrat’s nightmare, which is why the Federalists hated all things French, and why the Alien and Sedition Acts were established to prevent French immigration during the Adams administration.  

When the justices make insulting references to some thing or some group, the pattern visible in their decisions shows them doing that which they condemn.

To accomplish the reversal of the meaning and purpose of the Constitution, the court ruled that words don’t necessarily mean what they are thought to mean.  Meanings have to be revealed through the divine wisdom of the court. As you have seen, the Court often picks a word out of a sentence and redefines it to allow it to arrive at the decision it wants.  Here is how they introduced the “Words are Magic” doctrine that would later be expounded upon.

“Such is the character of human language that no word conveys to the mind in all situations one single definite idea, and nothing is more common than to use words in a figurative sense.”  (In a contract?)

WORDS IN A CONTRACT HAVE NO SPECIFIC MEANINGS
UNTIL THE HIGH COURT GRANTS THAT THOSE MEANINGS
MEAN WHAT THE CONTRACT HOLDERS INTENDED
NO MATTER WHAT THE CONTRACT HOLDERS (OF THE CONSTITUTION)
THOUGHT THEY INTENDED

As an example, the Court looked at the “necessary and proper” clause of the Constitution.  Actually, it mentioned the “and proper” part, but it focused on the word necessary to the exclusion of “and proper”.  The court asked itself if necessary actually means necessary.  Does it mean essential?  Or does it mean that it is somewhat necessary?  Is it somehow necessary?  If it is not even somewhat necessary, does that mean that it is not necessary at all?  Given all of that, the court decided:  

“Is it true that this is the sense in which the word "necessary" is always used? Does it always import an absolute physical necessity so strong that one thing to which another may be termed necessary cannot exist without that other? We think it does not….we find that it frequently imports no more than that one thing is convenient, or useful….”   

“NECESSARY” MEANS “UNNECESSARY”

It used the same reasoning when it came to the word “prohibited” as it appears in the 1oth amendment, that says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”.  

The court asked itself how prohibited something has to be to be prohibited.  Must it be a little prohibited?  A lot prohibited?  Absolutely prohibited?  Expressly prohibited?  If it’s not expressly prohibited, can it be said to be prohibited at all?  If it is not expressly prohibited, it must mean that it is authorized.  Therefore, the government has vast authority heretofore unfairly denied it.

“Even the 10th Amendment…, omits the word "expressly," and declares only that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people"

PROHIBITED MEANS PERMITTED

The Court rejected the idea that the Constitution is one of enumerated powers.  It decreed that unwritten, thus implied, powers are the same thing as enumerated or written powers.  How did it accomplish that?  It used the unwritten Law of Nations to decree that an implied power is an enumerated power.  

As the bank depended on the use of implied power for its existence, then the new unwritten (implied) constitution protects it.

“Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which excludes incidental or implied powers.”  

IF A GRANT OF POWER IS NOT IN THE CONSTITUTION,
THAT CAN ONLY MEAN THAT IT IS GRANTED.

BECAUSE IMPLIED AND INCIDENTAL POWERS ARE NOT GRANTED,
THAT CAN ONLY MEAN THAT THEY ARE GRANTED.

It held to the same standard when it invented the term “incidental powers” that had never been claimed before, thus the government has a whole new array of powers that it didn’t know it had.  

IF A NEW POWER (SUCH AS “INCIDENTAL POWERS”) IS INVENTED AT SOME FUTURE DATE, AND THAT POWER IS NOT EXPRESSLY DENIED BY THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION, THEN IT IS EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED.

Because at the onset, the court repealed any and all amendments as well as the parts of the constitution that allow the amendment process, more and more of the Constitution evaporate as one reads the decision.  The new government of unlimited powers transferred power to the natural owners of government�" the aristocracy�"who may hold onto that power using whatever means they find to be politically expedient or possible.

Maryland argued that the Bill of Rights cannot be repealed by the court because they were passed using the Article V Amendment Process that reads, “The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; …”   The terms of the contract had been met, in that the Bill of Rights as proposed by the Congress and unanimously ratified by the nation-states are required to be valid part of the Constitution.  

The court disagreed.  It had by now decided that the government is constituted by its own laws and judicial precedence (Common Law) rather than its originating contract, so that the word “Constitution”, as it was thought to mean by the general public, is legally meaningless.  The Constitution of the United States of America now means the unwritten constitution of the United States’ government�"a very different thing.  In this context, the constitution is merely the substance of which the government is “constituted”.  

The court very specifically and overtly announced that the government�"including the court�"is NOT bound by the written Constitution; they are bound TO government.  Where the court is concerned, that means that the court is bound to itself.

“The government of the United States, then, though limited in its powers (by its own will or the will of the court), is supreme; and its laws, when made in pursuance of the (unwritten) constitution (where necessary means unnecessary, prohibited means allowed, and implied means enumerated), form the supreme law of the land, anything in the (written) constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE TO HONOR THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION, ANYTHING IN THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION NOTWITHSTANDING.

and

“The Government… shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the (written) Constitution … to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

JUDGES ARE  NOT BOUND TO THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION,  
ANYTHING IN THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION NOTWITHSTANDING.

By decreeing this, the court silently but simultaneously dismissed Article I of the Constitution out of hand.  Article I gives ALL legislative power to the legislature, and gives a specific list of the powers that the legislature may use at its discretion.  The court is giving itself vast legislative power and is using it like a sledge hammer.  Unlimited government is now the law of the land, wherein the people have no direct authority or involvement.  It gets worse.

Judges are not only granted legislative power, that was necessary in order to declare the written Constitution unconstitutional, but the justice department is superior to the Executive and Legislative departments as well as the States and the people.  The pyramid reversed.  The framework of government was instantly turned on its head.  Judges opened themselves and the government up to opportunities for corruption because no branch of “government” is answerable to the people or the States, and the Justice Department is answerable to no one.  It’s a very cozy arrangement where the foxes work together to guard the hen house.  

The senate, the house, and the executive are now checked by the other two branches, and may now get away with anything that they can politically get away with.  Before this decision, there was no such thing as “balance of power” or notion of “checks and balances”.  The written constitution made these ideas impossible.  With this decision, the court has no check�"by its own design, so our government is not a system of checks and balances as was the case in the Roman Empire.  The Court’s word is law because a handful of appointed judges declared it to be law, and no law by any other branch of government, or any amendment of the people can counter its authority without its permission.

Maryland brought up the oath of office.  The Constitution requires Congress, the justices, and the president to take an “Oath or Affirmation, to support this (meaning the written) Constitution”.  The president, who signed the banking bill into law, was required by the Constitution to take an oath to “protect and defend the (written) Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies foreign an domestic”.  The Court gave an unlimited indulgence to all government officials as it pertains to honoring their oaths of office.  Those oaths can now mean whatever the people saying them want them to mean, even if they don’t actually change the actual words of their oath.  Any who disagrees must be insane.

“Yet he would be charged with insanity who should contend that the legislature might not superadd  (supernaturally or invisibly add) to the oath directed by the Constitution such other oath of office as its wisdom might suggest.”

What it means by this odd statement is that oaths of office now require people to swear an oath to the UNWRITTEN (invisible, nonexistent, thus supernatural) Constitution that the Court is now here establishing.

YOUR GOVERNMENTAL REPRESENTATIVES ARE NOT TO BE HELD TO THEIR OATHS OF OFFICE BECAUSE THE WORDS MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT FROM WHAT THE WORDS MEAN,
AND THEY NEED NEVER TELL YOU THEIR NEW MEANINGS
AND ONLY AN INSANE PERSON WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND
HOW SANE THE COURT IS BEING
IN THIS RULING

And

“If we apply this principle of construction to any of the powers of the Government, (That the Oath of office means what it says) we shall find it so pernicious in its operation that we shall be compelled to discard it.”

THE IDEA THAT THE WORDS IN AN OATH OF OFFICE
MEAN WHAT THEY APPEAR TO MEAN IS SO DANGEROUS
THAT THE IDEA ITSELF MUST BE DISCARDED.
YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES AND THE COURT
MUST BE FREED FROM THAT PERNICIOUS CONSTRAINT

The Court did affirm that the Constitution was ratified through ratifying conventions called for in Article VII: “The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.”  At that time, the court decreed, government became unassailable.

“From these [Constitution Ratifying] conventions the (unwritten) constitution derives its whole authority…”  Meaning that with the consent of the 0.0002% (two ten thousandths of a percent of the people who actually voted for ratification of the constitution) the government became unassailable by the 99.9998% of the people who could never reassume power or add an amendment that government has any obligation to honor.  Had the Constitution required the vote to be offered to only the six percent of eligible voters at the time, the Constitution would have failed in the ratification process.

The people are, therefore, bound to the government (as free slaves), as are the States, (which have suddenly lost their sovereignty).  

PEOPLE HAVE NO RIGHTS.
NEITHER DO THE STATES THAT
NO LONGER REPRESENT THE PEOPLE’S INTERESTS.

The court continued:

“the people were at perfect liberty to accept or reject [the Constitution]; and their act was final. It required not the affirmance, and could not be negatived, by the State governments. … The constitution, when thus adopted, was of complete obligation, and bound (ended) the State sovereignties” (as well as the peoples’).

BECAUSE THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED,
IT IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

The court went on to say that THOUGH THE PEOPLE DID NOT VOTE FOR RATIFICATION, THEY DID VOTE FOR RATIFICATION, thus the government exists with the consent of the governed, who are now subjects of that government by their own design, whether they intended that or not.

“The Government of the Union then, whatever may be the influences [of] fact on the case, is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by and (0.0002% ) of them, and are to be exercised directly ON them” (as opposed to BY them by virtue of Constitutional constraints and/or amendments).

THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT TO BE EXERCISED BY THE PEOPLE ON GOVERNMENT.  IT IS TO BE EXERCISED BY GOVERNMENT ON THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WHOLLY ITS SUBJECTS/PROPERTY/SLAVES.

The court went into great length to attack and delegitimize the Bill of Rights by saying that the purpose of the 10th Amendment, thus by inference, the entire Bill of Rights, was to calm the fears of those who didn’t like the Constitution without a Bill of Rights.  It “decreed” that there was never an intent on the part of government to honor them, so there is obviously no obligation on the part of government to do so.  Furthermore, the people cannot alter the agreement after-the-fact.

Most people are not aware that the Bill of Rights includes a preamble that explains its purposes and origins.  The court rejected the text of the preamble.  Here is the preamble that the court discarded:

“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

“RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

The Court decreed: [The 10th Amendment] “was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited.”

GOVERNMENT HAS NO OBLIGATION TO HONOR THE TENTH AMENDMENT (OR ANY AMENDMENT) BECAUSE
POOR PEOPLE ARE JEALOUS OF RICH PEOPLE FOR WHOSE BENEFIT
THE GOVERNMENT WAS CREATED.
BAD JEALOUS POOR PEOPLE!!!

and

“If we apply the principle for which the State of Maryland contends, to the (unwritten) Constitution generally, we shall find it capable of changing totally the character of that (invisible) instrument. We shall find it capable of arresting all the measures of the (common law) Government, and of prostrating it at the foot of the States. The American people have declared their (now-unwritten) Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof to be supreme, but this principle would transfer the supremacy, in fact, to the States.”  (As in fact, Article V-the amendment process�"and the people who ratified the amendments intended to.)

ARTICLE V (THE AMENDMENT PROCESS) IS REPEALED (AGAIN)

STATE’S RIGHTS CANCELLED (AGAIN)

and

“We cannot comprehend that train of reasoning, which would maintain that the extent of power granted by the people is to be ascertained not by the nature and terms of the grant, but by its date.”  (Meaning that the Bill of Rights came after initial ratification, intending to amendment the original document, so it would obviously be dated later.)

REPEATING YET AGAIN:
BILL OF RIGHTS DO NOT APPLY AND ARE NOT LAW
THOSE WHO THINK THEY DO APPLY MUST BE CRAZY

And:

“This was not intended by the American people. They did not design to make their (National) Government dependent on the States.”  (The history of the ratification of the constitution and the Bill of Rights �" told earlier�"tell a different story using actual documentary evidence.)

THE PEOPLE NEVER INTENDED TO RETAIN ANY FREEDOM OR POWER.  THEY WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT THEIR SERFDOM FROM ANY POSSIBE THREAT OF FREEDOM.

Yet as quickly as it denied intent by the people, it affirmed another kind of intent on the part of Congress that had actually taken it upon themselves to offer amendments to the people in the first place:

“The men who drew and adopted this amendment had experienced the embarrassments resulting from the insertion of this word [expressly] in the Articles of Confederation, and probably omitted it to avoid those embarrassments.”

THE AMENDMENTS WERE OFFERED FOR NO OTHER PURPOSE
THAN TO DECEIVE THE PEOPLE AND TRICK
THEM INTO RATIFYING THE CONSTITUTION
THAT GOVERNMENT NEVER INTENDED TO HONOR
AND WHICH BECAME INVALID THE MOMENT IT WAS RATIFIED

And, repeating what has been said before, but being sure to insult the people in the process:

“A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity (wordiness) of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public.”   

THE UNWRITTEN AND UNWRITABLE EPHEMERAL COMMON LAW
IS EASIER TO UNDERSTAND
BECAUSE IT DOESN’T CONTAIN ACTUAL WORDS.

AND (IMPLIED)

POOR PEOPLE ARE STUPID

Repeating, it says that Congress can do as it wants without constraints, and if it wants to establish a bank, it may, because anything a sovereign power wants to do is part of its sovereignty. Government therefore has unlimited power.

“On what foundation does this argument rest? On this alone: the power of creating a corporation is one appertaining to sovereignty, and is not expressly conferred on Congress. This is true. But all legislative powers appertain to sovereignty.”

IF GOVERNMENT LEGISLATES IT, IT IS CONSTITUTIONAL IF WE SAY IT IS,
ANYTHING IN THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION
NOTWITHSTANDING

Returning to the notion that “necessary” cannot possibly mean “necessary”, the court decrees that those who think is does are insane:

“In ascertaining the sense in which the word "necessary" is used in this clause of the Constitution, we may derive some aid from that with which it is associated. Congress shall have power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry into execution" the powers of the Government. If the word "necessary" was used in that strict and rigorous sense for which the counsel for the State of  Maryland contend, it would be an extraordinary departure from the usual course of the human mind”  (Underline added)

ONLY AN INSANE PERSON WOULD THINK THAT
NECESSARY MEANS NECESSARY

Maryland did try to stand in support of the state’s sovereignty, but the court rejected that out of hand, saying that Maryland was abusing not only the Federal government but the other states (who ratified the Bill of Rights unanimously) as well.

“The attempt to use it [State sovereignty] on the means employed by the Government of the Union, in pursuance of the (written) Constitution, is itself an abuse because it is the usurpation of a power which the people of a single State cannot give.” This is a clear Hamiltonian tactic.  Accuse others of what you are doing.

The court reaffirmed that Maryland (and all other states) lost their sovereignty at the moment that the Original constitution was ratified, therefore it cannot claim that it is losing something that it already lost.

“The right [of State sovereignty] never existed, and the question whether [or not] it has been surrendered cannot arise.”

YOU CANNOT LOSE YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS
OR YOUR FREEDOMS
BECAUSE YOU CANNOT LOSE WHAT YOU DO NOT HAVE
(THANKS TO THIS DECISION).

It deduced that Maryland’s defense of the written constitution constituted an abuse of other States, and an intrusion into their affairs (even though the Bill of Rights was unanimously ratified).  Perhaps, the court suggested, other states do not want the Bill of Rights honored.

“Would the people of any one State trust those of another with a power to control the most insignificant operations of their State government? We know they would not. Why, then, should we suppose that the people of any one State should be willing to trust those of another with a power to control the operations of a government to which they have confided their most important and most valuable interests”

A STATE THAT DEFENDS THE CONSTITUTION OR BILL OF RIGHTS
IS ABUSING THE OTHER STATES

STATES GLADLY GAVE UP THEIR SOVEREIGNTY AND
ARE GRATEFUL FOR HAVING HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO

DISMISSING THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNANIMOUSLY AGREED TO BILL OF RIGHTS BEFORE REFORMING GOVERNMENT INTO THE MODEL OF A FEUDAL DICTATORSHIP GOVERNED BY AN UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION WITH THE COURT AS ITS SOVEREIGN, STRIPPING THE STATES OF THEIR SOVEREIGNTY AND THE PEOPLE OF ALL STATES OF THEIR FREEDOM, IS AN “INSIGNIFICANT OPERATION” THAT ALL OTHER STATES WOULD HAVE HEARTILY APPROVED OF, AND FOR WHICH THEY WOULD HAVE THANKED THE COURT THAT NOW SO STRONGLY DEFENDS THEIR RIGHTS�"MEANING SUDDEN LACK THEREOF.

The court pulled out the (FAILED) arguments from Hamilton’s Federalist Papers in its defense, saying that:

“had the authors of those excellent [Federalist] essays been asked whether they contended for that construction of the Constitution which would place within the reach of the States those measures which the Government might adopt for the execution of its powers, no man who has read their instructive pages will hesitate to admit that their answer must have been in the negative.”  

HAMILTON’S FAILED FEDERALIST PAPERS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE WINNING ANTI-FEDERALIST PAPERS, AND MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF

Of course those who called themselves Federalists never agreed with the intent and purpose of the written Constitution!  As you know by now, that is exactly why they were rejected by the people, and a Bill of Rights was demanded if the Constitution was to be ratified at all.  Yet the courts still depend on those failed Federalist Papers to defend its unconstitutional positions.

The court stated that precedence validated the law that had been heard in cases of “peculiar delicacy” that the court preferred to not explain.

“The principle now contested was introduced at a very early period of our history, has been recognized by many successive legislatures, and has been acted upon by the judicial department, in cases of peculiar delicacy, as a law of undoubted obligation.”

THE COURT IS UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO INFORM THE PUBLIC WHY IT IS MAKING A DECISION IF “PECULIAR DELICACIES” ARE INVOLVED.

In looking at the inconsistencies between the old constitutional government and the new type of government that the court here admitted to framing, the court offered what it thought was a splendid idea that would resolve all problems:

“But all inconsistencies (between the two forms of government being discussed here) are to be reconciled by the magic of the word CONFIDENCE.” …  

THE PEOPLE CAN BE CONFIDENT THAT THE COURT WILL NOT
EXCEED ITS AUTHORITY AS IT IS NOW EXCEEDING ITS AUTHORITY
BECAUSE WORDS ARE MAGIC
and

 “[Government] can be trusted by the people with the power of controlling measures which concern all, in the confidence that it will not be abused.”

GOVERNMENT CAN BE TRUSTED BY THE PEOPLE,
IN THE CONFIDENCE THAT IT WILL NOT ABUSE ITS AUTHORITY
AS IT IS NOW ABUSING ITS AUTHORITY

It sounds like an abusive husband telling his wife to trust him; that he would never beat her, even as he is beating her, and that is supposed to make sense to her because words are magic.  

The Holy Roman Empire has been ressurected under a different name. Feudalism is now the of the land.

That is why you have no voice in your own government.  It is not your own government.  It is not a government of, by, and for the people.  It is the playing field of the chosen few made to benefit the chosen few.  It forces you to sell your labors (become free-slaves) to pay taxes that keep you in serfdom.  And because of the government-sponsored lies told to us in mandatory public schooling, we work against our own interests.

Government is no longer a matter of law.  It is officially a matter of politics and getting away with as much as politicians or the courts can get away with without provoking riots, that can generally be put down with armies that we pay for, which is why politics today are so broken.  The two major political parties are warring over how they can destroy the opponent’s favored, but still unconstitutional policies.

The goal post can be moved whenever politicians find it helpful to their own financial interests.   The court legislated George Orwell’s “1984” into existence and enshrined it as law when it said:

“The Court has bestowed on this subject its most deliberate consideration. The result is a conviction that the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operations of the (unwritten thus unconstitutional) constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the General Government.”

SUMMARY AND REITERATION BY THE COURT:
THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
GOVERNMENT CAN DO IS IT PLEASES, BECAUSE THE COURT MAKES THE LAW AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT !
(NA, na NA NAAA na!)

With this edict (and it was nothing short of a dictatorial edict from the now firmly enthroned American dictator), a handful of obviously corrupt appointed men, who sat on the bench for life, used treason, lies, deceit, imagination, insults, accusations of insanity and abuse, to repeal your Constitutional government and turn your government into a feudal dictatorship with the court sharing the implied throne.   Every court, congress, and every president except Jefferson and Madison have supported the decision, and it is no wonder why.  

“IT’S GOOD TO BE KING!”

Mc Culloch v. Maryland was a coup d’état and nothing less.  And THAT is how your government went from the courts having been granted no legislative power  to having the most, and how the president, the least powerful branch of government, now having so much power that the executive can issue unconstitutional executive orders that become law.  The pyramid toppled.

         


AND THAT IS HOW ALL BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT BECAME SO CORRUPT.  Mc CULLOCH V. MARYLAND INVITED THEM TO BE SO.
IT SET THE STAGE FOR THE ROBBER BARONS (NOW WALL STREET)) TO TAKE POWER. IT SOLD YOUR GOVERNMENT TO THE HIGHEST BIDDERS.
THERE WAS A CLASS WAR.  THE RICH WON .

Since Mc Culloch v. Maryland, the court and all branches of our government have maintained that the Constitution is nothing more than a guideline that government may, at its discretion, honor or not, as politics allow.  

With the fiat called Mc Culloch v. Maryland, the last nails were pounded into the coffin holding the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.  Government was remade in the image of the feudal dictatorship of the Roman Empire that England has long maintained, with the court acting as its Caesar, the only TRUE god (anything in the First Amendment notwithstanding).  

That government exists for the purpose of serving an aristocracy while convincing you that you are free even though you are a serf�"a free-slave�"as Adam Smith called you.  Everything that our Revolutionary War heroes fought for was lost.  The government that you thought you had, died on March 6, 1819.  The freedom that so many fought and died for throughout the centuries since, is a lie.

Most of your elected “representatives” are law school graduates.  Not a single law school graduate is unfamiliar with Mc Culloch v. Maryland.  It is the most important decision in the history of American juris(im)prudence.  When these people speak to you about the Constitution, they refer to the unwritten constitution while they know that you think that they are speaking of the written constitution.  This allows them to speak in doublespeak.  Now that you know that, you will not be so easily deceived.  With knowledge comes power.  The truth shall set us free.


ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION’S
10th Amendment    
COURT’S “INTERPRETATION”
of the 10TH Amendment

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”    
The 10th Amendment is hereby repealed.  If an amendment changes the terms of a document, the amendment is repealed, not the part of the document that the amendment intended to amend.  Neither the people nor the States have a right to amend government power or tell the sovereign government what it can or cannot do.  Oaths of office are meaningless.

Government shall have EVERY power unless “expressly” prohibited by the Constitution; and even when a power is expressly prohibited, government may none-the-less retain that power through implied, necessary, and  “incidental” powers, given the “expressed” under-standing that the absence of a grant of power means the power is granted, implied means enumerated, necessary means unnecessary, and prohibited means permitted, because words are “magic”, and “he would be charged with insanity” who would think otherwise.

This lengthy, multi-part chapter (3 A �" H) started in the National Archives where the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are housed along with the Declaration of Independence.  If you should ever find yourself on the 700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue N. W. in Washington DC, and you enter into that magnificent Rotunda that purports to honor our nation’s most revered documents, do understand that you are entering a mausoleum; not a monument.  

The documents that you have come to pay your respects to are lying in repose in their titanium and glass caskets. The argon gas and the humidity settings are the embalming method.  The documents are preserved and offered up for your inspection in order to further a lie; anything that you have heard to the contrary notwithstanding.  

As you learned about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights in your mandatory public schooling, understand that you did not learn that the Supreme Court declared the Constitution unconstitutional.  You were not required to memorize the Constitution in preparation for your citizenship and participation in a government of, by, and for the people.  That intentional omission is a covert lie, thus it is intentional abuse.   Because of “mandatory public schooling”, the meaning and purpose of these once-precious documents were thrown down the Orwellian memory hole, along with the actual meaning of freedom.

As you feel the cognitive dissonance, let it be explained with this:

You are being deceived.

As this book is being written to provide the avenue of escape from the tyranny of feudalism�"without money or violence�"be encouraged by the fact that you are being led through the truth that shall set us free.  Unfortunately, there is more disheartening information that you need to know before we turn our attention to the bright side: the true meanings of peace and freedom and how to claim them.

With that in mind, let us look next at the history of mandatory public schooling in America (and by now, most of the world).  There is important knowledge essential to your well-being that you were intentionally denied and effectively prevented from allowing to come into your consciousness.  The next chapter explains why.  Book Two explains what you haven’t been permitted to discover about yourself as a result of schooling.

 Chapter 15:
The Weaponization of Education



A child born today in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university ...  This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them.  Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad.
R.D. Laing: The Politics of Experience.



" … true to the Principles of doublethink, the Party taught that the proles (citizens) were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules. …  All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice. “
George Orwell, “1984”



There is an amazing school in Framingham, Massachusetts unlike any most people have hard of.  It is called the Sudbury School.  

Imaging being young and jumping out of bed, eager to go to school.  When you arrive, you find children, ages four to nineteen, laughing, playing games, skateboarding, fishing, reading under a tree, building a birdhouse, learning how to play a musical instrument, playing video games, having group conversations about anything and everything, learning at the computer or in small classes where the teachers aren’t as much teachers as they are helpers.  Teachers are mentors and responsible adults who are available to guide when asked.  

In this school, there are no compulsory classes.  You can attend a class or not, as it suits you.  You might be the only person in the class.  You might be one of six or seven sitting around a table with a teacher.  Classes are not arranged by age.  They are arranged by interest.  If you and some friends want to invent a class, you may.  The one who knows most about the subject matter can be a teacher, regardless of age, or a class can form with no teacher other than the question that formed it.  It is not uncommon to see a younger student guiding an older one.   There is great respect from one student to another as well as adults to children and vice versa. There are no tests.  Students know if they know what they need to know in order to accomplish what they want to accomplish.  There are no grades; no report cards.

The school is open from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM.  A student’s only obligation is to be there for five hours a day.  Students and their families choose the time.  Students hug one another before the start of summer vacation.  They would rather forego the vacation.  They would rather be at school.

Now understand that this school is a democracy.  Every person in the school has one vote�"teachers and students alike�"even the youngest.  Votes determine how everything works, from how the school’s budget is used to whether or not it is permissible to use chalk to draw on the sidewalk.  All, yes even students, vote on whether or not to renew a teacher’s contract, which runs for one year at a time.  There is no tenure.  

Students and teachers gather once a week to solve problems that have come up in the past week.  Situations are discussed and solutions proposed.  The teachers are not in charge.  The students are.  Students are allowed to make mistakes because mistakes are an important part of learning.  So is learning that mistakes are not fatal, and that life goes on.  If a teacher breaks a rule, that is discussed with attention equal to that which happens if a student breaks a rule or behaves inappropriately.  All are fundamentally equal and treated as such.

The purpose of these schools is not to prepare students to get good-paying jobs when they graduate.  The purpose is to help them discover who they are, what their talents and interests are, how to live a full and complete life, and how to solve problems that face every human, whether child or adult.

As ideal as these schools may sound to public school students, they are far more difficult than traditional public schools.  Children must take responsibility for their actions and emotions, as well as their consequences.  If they metaphorically fall down, no one picks them up, though they are encouraged to get up.  They must learn how to pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and move on.  They also have to take responsibility for their community, and that requires both complex and critical thinking skills.  It requires learning, through first hand experience, how to resolve conflicts before they escalate.  One has to see a larger world to take responsibility for self and community.

Students don’t learn to read because reading is required.  When an interest makes reading important, a student chooses to learn to read.  The choice might be made when the child is four or twelve, but it is always made.  The same thing happens with math.  Something will pique an interest that cannot be fully explored without math, or dance, or astronomy, or woodworking, or cooking, or anything else that arouses curiosity.  They get to experience first-hand how one subject naturally leads to another.  Learning isn’t compartmentalized.

The Sudbury School, and others like them, are called democratic schools.  Their purpose is to provide an atmosphere that promotes a child-driven education.  The philosophy behind them is that children come from the womb intensely curious and eager to learn, like every other mammal.  They are not empty repositories waiting to be filled by those who know better.  The belief is that, given resources, children naturally want to learn and become. Studies confirm that.

When they reach adulthood, graduates’ from democratic schools have well-rounded educations.  They also have something that most public school graduates don’t have.  An awareness of self, which makes them emotionally mature and self-confident; ready to tackle anything that life throws at them.  

The surprising thing about these schools is that they have an excellent track record.  The Sudbury School’ alumni study shows that eighty-two percent of graduates take SAT and ACT tests before going on to colleges or universities within six years of graduation.   As adults, they work in every available field.  Graduates feel in control of their destinies.  A whopping forty-two percent become entrepreneurs. (as opposed to less than 7.6% closer to the general population at the time of the school’s alumni study. )  A high number pursue careers in the arts�"music, art, dance, writing, and acting�"though others pursue careers in math, computers, and education.

Universally, graduates of democracy schools are life-long learners.  Education isn’t about earning a piece of paper.  Education is about the joy of learning and the joy of problem solving.

Compare that to our failing public schools.  The Alliance for Excellent Education states that only sixty-nine percent of high school students graduate nationwide.  Break it down by ethnic, looking at the minorities, and the numbers are far worse.  Only fixty-six percent of African Americans, fifty-four percent of Hispanic Americans, and fifty-one percent of Native Americans graduate.  If it weren’t for Asian Americans, who have an eighty-one percent graduation rate, our overall graduation numbers would be lower.  

How is it that we have an educational system that is not serving such a large portion of our society when another system that does serve the students is not even talked about?  Why have so few even heard about the democratic schools that do exist around the world?  Why has government forced many out of business because of mandatory  testing in exchange for funding assistance?

This is not to suggest or imply that we can pluck teen dropouts off the streets of an inner-city and dump them in democracy schools to have them be miraculously transformed.  That’s obviously not possible.  But we can ask if we are doing the best that we can for our youth.  We can take a close look at what education in America is, and what it was meant to accomplish.

When it comes to the American mandatory public schooling, its roots can be traced back to the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in the latter days of the revolution. When Napoleon came to power, he implemented a wide array of liberal reforms that were largely consistent with the ideas of the enlightenment.  He implemented the Napoleonic Code that is in many ways, consistent with the values of those called the anti-federalists during America’s earliest years.  

The intent of these codes was to abolish feudalism, or as much of it as could be recognized within the existing cultural paradigm (until Napoleon went crazy).  The idea spread quickly throughout Europe as France (egalitarian) and Britain (aristocratic) fought for European supremacy, in a battle that brought the Holy Roman Empire to an end.

New secondary schools (high schools) were established in the larger cities of France, and were open to all young men of talent. Liberal education, including the skepticism that is part of the scientific method, became widespread.

This, of course, caused a bit of a tumult and was used as a political weapon in the battle between the enlightened left and feudalist right. The feudalist right wanted to return to schools controlled by the Catholic Church.  They would teach obedience and traditionalism. The left demanded secular education with an emphasis on teaching republicanism  and skepticism, leaving no role for any church.

This political rancor about education was not lost on Prussian Johann Fichte who immediately understood the meaning of the old axiom: “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”.

Fichte was unable to let go of the sting of defeat when the trained Prussian army was not able to hold back Napoleon’s army of drafted amateurs.  Prussia came under French rule, and the people were happy to content themselves with it.

Fichte began giving passionate speeches in London about the need to create a new world order.  His motive was to reunite the Holy Roman Empire that had been broken apart in the ongoing wars.  To do this, Fichte reasoned, the German government needed to invent a unique German culture so that it could take back its rightful place as the culture of the pure race.  If such a culture were instituted, Prussia could raise an army of dedicated soldiers who understood their patriotic duty to restore Germany to its former glory.  After that, Germany could become self-sufficient and become the center of the entire world, as, he said, it should always have been.  He thought the French enlightenment had spoiled Germans and made them soft.  Germans must learn DISCIPLINE, OBEDIENCE, and PATRIOTISM!

He did agree with some enlightenment ideas.  Germany, Fichte said, belongs to Germans, not to aristocrats and foreign powers. It should be self-sufficient, not plundering nor be plundered.  

Because Fichte intended to reclaim the German Republic and create a German culture, Fichte agreed with Hamilton.  Cultural diversity would not be tolerated.

Fichte is considered the father of national socialism (Nazisim).  Nazism would later be the design of the Third Reich.  It would be a morality-based culture, but rather than be of the Catholic tradition that Hitler turned to, Fichte wanted schooling to be of the Lutheran tradition.
 
For Fichte, who was an atheist, God was not a being.  God was morality (emotions), which is what Hamilton thought.  With God being emotions, the State was evidence of God’s divinity because the State codified morality in the name of patriotism that could easily be imputed into citizens through the use of fear.  

To create a new culture in the midst of a splintered Christian world, it would be necessary to convince students that the state is God, yet it would do so without ever making that claim.  It would employ Christian morals, and would borrow its themes.  Fichte believed that independent thinking caused factions, so he would use morality as a way to end any and all independent thinking.

The only way to accomplish that objective, Fichte reasoned, was to take the children away from the distracting influences of their parents and communities while they were young and insert them into an artificial community.  This would be easily achieved by instituting mandatory education for all children�"boys and girls alike.  In urban areas, they would be divided by age. The younger students would immediately recognize their inferiority to the older students and teachers.    That would be a good thing.

Education would teach the ABCs and mathematics and other things that the movers and shakers of the industrial revolution needed; BUT, what the children learned would only be “incidental” to the type of schooling that he proposed.  It would be an unavoidable consequence but certainly not its purpose.

He intended to banish what he saw as the destructive ideas of the enlightenment in order to focus only on the present�"the material�"the tangible. The method he proposed: Learn by doing, not by thinking.  Do this every day in every way possible until the inserted code of morality became an unthinking habit and the ability to think independently wasted away from lack of use.

His ideal education would limit the students’ ability to think beyond that which was allowed to be thought; to prevent a student from ever asking an improper question.  To accomplish this, his “new education” would teach German morality first and foremost.  Within that morality was love of hard work, respect for and obedience to authority, as well as inextinguishable understanding of patriotic duty and love of the fatherland. This is how the Patriotism Response and the For God Response was drilled into our heads in a very unconscious way.

To anticipated detractors of his ideas, he said:

“Now perchance someone might say, as indeed those who administer the present system of education almost without exception actually do say: What more should one expect of any education than that it should point out what is right to the pupil and exhort him earnestly to it; whether he wishes to follow such exhortations is his own affair and, if he does not, [it is] his own fault ; he has free will, which no education can take from him.

“Then, in order to define more clearly the new education which I propose, I should reply that the very recognition of, and reliance upon, free will in the pupil is the first mistake of the old system and the clear confession of its impotence and futility. … the new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys  freedom of will….

“If you want to influence him (the student) at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.

“… He who has such a stable will, wills what he wills forever, and cannot under any circumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity [through mandatory public schooling].”

Fichte proposed several methods of breaking the spirit of children so that they can be remolded into the ideal German citizen.  

First, children must learn and take into adulthood the idea that they are inferior to all authorities.  Ideas like respect for and obedience to authority would not be taught in the traditional verbal way.  It would never even be mentioned.  These ideas would be practiced, over and over and over again�"so often that the ideas would become their reality and nothing to the contrary would seem real.  

This began in the first year of school, when teachers were called Mrs./Mr. LastName, but the teacher called the student by the first name, which is how disrespect is overtly conveyed.  This produces shame and fear and a sense of inferiority.

In the new education, teachers should openly criticize mistakes in full view of the child’s peers, in order to produce shame.  Grading is essential for the same reason.  It is how the students learn that they are imperfect, always being judged, and nearly incapable of making an informed decision.  This, he insisted, encourages them to try harder to reach what is ultimately an unreachable goal.

Without the shame, he said, learning cannot take place.   The child must work to earn that which will never, ever be given�"affirmation and respect.  

His reasoning for this method has to do with what he said is a child’s natural preference for the more distant and unloving parent.  A child, he said in one of his many passionate speeches, will turn away from the knee of his doting mother as he puts great effort into attempts to gain affection from a distant and unloving father.  The new education will take advantage of what he calls that natural inclination.

“The new education, will instill symbols and themes into the mind of the student. The theme of ‘Love of the fatherland’, is more important than historical accuracy.  History doesn’t have to be truthful because learning history is not the purpose of schooling.”  (as you have so far  seen in this book)

By the time a student graduates, the fatherland will become the new father, and the adult that the student will be, will always eagerly yield to the will of the fatherland�"wanting to please any authority figure representing it, being unable to do, think, or know anything else.

“This training, therefore, in its final result, is the training of the pupil’s faculty of knowledge, and, of course, not historical training in the actual condition of things, but the higher and philosophical training in the laws which make that actual condition of things inevitable. The pupil learns.”

In other words, teach a child to fear equality, and regardless of the true nature of things, the student will forever be afraid of equality.  Teach a child that those who have less are essentially inferior to those who have more, and the child will look down on those who have less.

It is essential, Fichte continues, for the child never to hear about a self-interest, or even to hear that it is possible to act in one’s own interest.   Any sense of individuality and uniqueness must be banished so that it is forever inaccessible. The student must never be allowed to think an independent thought or use independent reason.  The child must be taught to hate learningnand love serfdom.

“He must not even hear that our vital impulses and actions can be directed towards our maintenance and welfare, nor that we may learn for that reason, nor that learning may be of some use for that purpose.”

This is key because if a child were to develop a love of learning, that child would be naturally catapulted out of the delusion in which he or she was so carefully immersed.  That would create a danger to the government.

“It follows that mental development should be produced in him only in the manner described above, that he should be occupied with it unceasingly, and that this method of instruction should on no account be exchanged for that which requires the opposite material motive”

We were to be made into a kind of Borg, where uniformity was required, and self-awareness, thus self-worth necessarily destroyed.

As he frames out his method of indoctrination, he encourages holding out unattainable ideals, presenting them as attainable, alongside many prohibitions, with the actual prohibitions not being as important as the need for them.

“It will be fitting, therefore, that the legislation, and the instruction concerning the constitution which is to be based thereon, should represent to each individual all the others, and animated by a love of order exalted to the ideal, which, perhaps no one person really has, but which all ought to have. It will be fitting, too, that the legislation should consequently maintain a high standard of severity, and should prohibit the doing of many things.”

To ensure that teachers taught “by the book”, teachers colleges would need to be established.  Having teachers paid by the government would make teachers subordinate to government rather than the students or their parents, as was common in traditional schools.  Teachers would be required to accept the curriculum without question.  

Consequently, the ability to reason, think abstract thoughts, inquire, and question authority or even one’s own ethical responsibility in the face of life’s more difficult challenges, was lost in little more than a generation.  The ability to conceive of reality without what the student has been falsely taught has been taken away, and any suggestion or idea that does not fit into the artificial reality  (the delusion) frightens the person processed through the system, for reasons that the individual cannot quite fathom.  

The state morality (Fitche’s God) would be taught in churches and in schools, making schools another religion.  The religion is not Christianity, though it is based on Lutheranism.  The religion is the religion of Patriotism/Nationalism.  Emotions are its God and money is proof of its power.

Slowly, without the student or parent being aware of it, the allegiance switched to the God that is the State.   It would never be spoken of.   There could be no mention of it.  It would be practiced daily.  That’s why, until recently, children were required to say a prayer and pledge of allegiance to the flag of the government operating under God, rather than the constitution guarding liberty, at the start of each school day.

One of the benefits Fichte must have seen in his ideal educational system is that all information is compartmentalized.  Because schooling is not for educating, English is not connected with history is not connected to mathematics is not connected to the arts is not connected to science.  Each is its own field.  Through daily forced practice, most students never realized that all ideas are related to one another and that no field of study can stand alone.  

This type of schooling that has been forced on us prevented us from recognizing that given enough education (rather than schooling), we DO have the ability, using reasoning alone, to arrive at a solution to all of America’s problems that arise from our calling our feudal government the greatest freedom-loving country in the world.  Another problem with compartmentalizing information is that no student is allowed to know all of the parts of a problem.  Each knows only a little, so that the power of the “Fatherland” is never disrupted.  Furthermore, the learning process of memorization rather than thinking was so boring that it was unthinkable that anyone would find joy in self-education after being processed through the system.  Mandatory schooling exists to make people stupid as it destroys their innate curiosity.  For Fichte, education is dangerous.  Schooling is necessary.

In Fichte’s mind, people schooled in his methods will forever wander through life unaware that there is an essential part of humanity that was erased from the human consciousness.  They will not be able to see the world that the enlightened see.  Better than that, they will fear making an independent choice.  They will always bow to peer pressure or pressure from the State or any authority figure, be it civil or religious.    They will be easily managed through the use of fear.  This will make them ideal citizens.  They will have been conditioned in the same way Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned.

This is the model that is America’s educational paradigm.  It is the prominent educational model for all western nations.

This system was brought to America by Whig  Horace Mann, who served in both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Massachusetts Senate.  It was supported with the generous help of the Rockefellers and Carnegies and other Robber Barons of the great American aristocracy.  Of course, their own children would not be attending public schools that used these methods.  They would be getting educated in private schools, with their futures as leaders in mind.  They would be learning about their innate superiority while public school students were having their self-esteem systematically destroyed, and their sense of being an integral part of a mutually inclusive society quashed.

Arguing that universal public schooling was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious Republicans, Horace Mann won widespread approval from his Whig party. Most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers in Fitche’s methods.

It wasn’t long before these ideas were seen as so effective that they were viewed as an excellent way to “civilize” the Indians.  Indian schools were then established.  Some were on the reservations, but many were off-reservation boarding schools that left students having nightmares well into their old age.

Indian schools were a tool to “assimilate” Indians into the mainstream of the “American way of life” whether they liked it or not.  They also existed to teach the Protestant Whig ideology of the mid to late 19th century, which of course was Mann’s intent.

Students were expected to learn and speak English, and were not allowed to use their native languages�"even to one another.  All native customs and celebrations were banned.  In some schools, boys had their hair cut and students, both boys and girls, were required to wear civilized white man’s dress.

The schools taught history with a definite white bias. Indian students were taught that Columbus Day was not only a banner day in history but also a beneficent development in their own race’s fortune. Only after Columbus discovered America did Indians enter the stream of history. Thanksgiving was a holiday to celebrate “good” Indians having aided the brave Pilgrim Fathers. New Year’s was a reminder of how white people kept track of time.  Washington’s birthday served as a reminder of the “Great White Father.” On Memorial Day some students at off-reservation schools were made to decorate the graves of soldiers who killed their fathers.

The schools hoped to produce students who were economically self-sufficient and able to assimilate in America’s mercantilist economy.  They would teach work skills and instill work values and beliefs of possessive individualism�"meaning that you care about yourself and what you own before you care about anything or anyone else except the government. This opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership and the importance of relationships.  For the Indian, the land was for all people and all of nature, and that community is a family that takes care of one another.  In addition to Fitchte’s goals of depriving the student of awareness of a inner self, the goal of Indian school was to teach love of material wealth and the importance of independent nuclear families that these schools systematically destroyed through their mere existence.

Conversion to Christianity was deemed essential. Schools were expected to develop programs of religious instruction. Emphasis was placed on the Ten Commandments, the beatitudes and psalms. As in the traditional “white” schools, implanting ideas of sin and a sense of guilt and shame was essential.

As in the white schools, the goal was to eradicate all vestiges of the parents’ unique culture.  By 1900 practicality became the goal and schools moved toward industrial training while academics languished.  After all, schools weren’t designed to educate in the first place.  They were designed to assimilate and turn students into workers for the benefit of the State and its financial supporters.

That is why you were required to go to school where you learned about treasured documents that were presented to us as being in operation today, but were dismissed in 1819.  You were taught themes as history.  Facts were irrelevant and counter-productive.  You learned ABOUT the Constitution, but you never learned what it says.  You are still a serf calling your serfdom “freedom”, just as you have learned to.  Your mandatory public schooling that places materialism and wealth above all else, intends to keep you there.

The mission statement of the US Department of Education says that it exists “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness”.  It continues to say how it will achieve that, but this is a good time to look at what the mission statement does not say.

It does not say that it exists to prepare students to run a government of, by, and for the people.  It does not say that it exists to provide a quality education.  It does not say that it exists to prepare students to be informed voters.  It does not say it exists to empower a student to live a satisfying and personally rewarding life.  It doesn’t even claim to exist to prepare students to run American businesses for America’s benefit.

What it does not say overtly, it says covertly.  It exists as a tax-payer supported subsidy for the global bamlomg-industrial complex, that owns you by design, and for whom you are expected to gratefully indenture yourself upon graduation.

Look also at the mission statement’s intent to prepare students for “competitiveness”.  Competitiveness is the opposite of cooperation, that any society needs when it is necessary to overthrow a tyrannical regime.   The very idea of social cooperation was destroyed by public schooling.  Trust, respect, and affection were systematically destroyed.

Our school system doesn’t work for us.  It provably kills our natural curiosity, therefore, our natural cognitive reasoning abilities.  In a must-see video, Sir Ken Robinson speaks of the damage done to students of our educational paradigm.    He tells about a study presented by George Land and Beth Jarman in their book, “Breakpoint and Beyond”.   

To see how education has affected us, Land and Jarman tested students on their “divergent thinking” abilities.   This test asks how many things could one do with an item such as a paperclip.  Those who are geniuses in divergent thinking�"a core component of creativity�"can come up with as many as two hundred possible uses.  The typical adult can come up with about ten.  What makes the exceptions “geniuses” is that they are able to see lots of possible answers to the question as well as lots of possible ways to interpret the question.   The study was longitutinal, in that it followed the subjects through their education, testing them every few years using a test given to prospective NASA engineers.

When tested as kindergartners, 98 percent of the study's subjects scored at the genius level. When they were ten, 32 percent of them scored as high, and by age fifteen, only 10 percent made the cut. When 200,000 adults were given the same test, only two percent tested at the genius level.  The conclusion was that something essential to humanity is being educated out of our children.

To understand exactly what may have happened to us as a result of mandatory public schooling, one may not need to look any further than the work of Dr. Bruce McEwen, who, in 1967, published the first publicly available research on the relationship between stress and brain damage.  He and his team discovered that continual stress wreaks havoc on both the bodies and the minds of animals.  In one of his first studies, rats were placed in a compartment and their movement restricted for six hours a day during their normal resting time. This is about how long a student is restrained in school each day, though children are not restrained during their normal resting time.  They are restrained during their normal active time, which common sense suggests would make the restraint more stressful.

The first time the rats were restrained, their cortisol (stress hormone) levels rose as their stress response moved into full gear. Then for the next twenty-one days, their cortisol production switched off earlier each day as they became accustomed to the restraint. But at day twenty-one, researchers discovered that the rats began to show the effects of chronic stress. They grew anxious and aggressive. Their immune systems became slower to fight off invaders. Nerve cells in the hippocampus  started to atrophy. The production of new hippocampal neurons stopped, and the rats developed a condition that seemed to resemble some kind of dementia.  Those who have escaped the American delusion look at others and see something that vaguely resembles dementia.  

More studies show other counter-intuitive consequences of our educational paradigm.  It turns out that the human creature is far more motivated by challenge and self-mastery along with making a meaningful contribution than motivated by money, that our schooling system errently promotes .  The carrot and stick paradigm used by our schooling system doesn’t work except for the most menial tasks, such as memorizing or moving something from one place to another.  Ask employees to use even the least amount of cognitive thinking skills, and the carrot and stick approach (rewards and punishments) collapses and actually becomes counter productive.  The more financial rewards offered, the worse people perform.  (Think about that as teachers demand more pay or as CEOs who orchestrated the 2008 bank failures took tax-payer funded bonuses.)

As it turns out,  studies show that thinking and solving problems is one of the most fun things that a human can do.  It is what we are born yearning to do.  It’s what all mamals are born doing. Our schooling system has taken that away from us, and thanks to Fichte, makes us afraid to use those parts of our minds that we learned were dangerous.  For our children, it is: Learn what you have to learn to be rewarded with a certificate of achievement, or you will face the shame of not being normal.

Thanks to our schooling model that teaches lies for history along with enough skills to make us compliant serfs in a global marketplace, never allowing us to amass all of the parts of a puzzle that would permit us to see the obvious single solution to America’s and the globe’s multitude of problems, Americans are now functionally uneducated and effectively diseducated.  We may have expensive elegantly printed pieces of paper that tell us that we are educated, but they are issued in the furtherance of a lie.  If we are not able to see the obvious way out of our common delusion, we are functionally uneducated.

Self-education is a way to wrest your mind from the prison that you were forced to keep it in because of mandatory public schooling.  Problem solving will open your creative abilities and turn on your native curiosity.   Perfecting a hobby will introduce you to satisfaction.  Exercising your brain until you find the joy of learning will make it much easier to let go of the feudal model that we have all embraced for so long, so that we can replace it with something absolutely amazing and wonderful.

To make sense of how our schooling paradigm has turned us into beings that have lost touch with our humanity and turned us into something no rational human being could be proud of, let us next look at the history and workings of money, and the system that you have been conditioned to serve.  

After that, we will be ready to learn the exciting parts of who and what you are that have been withheld from you.  And after that you will be fully prepared to participate in a government of, by, and for the people.

 Chapter 16
The Alpha and Omega of
Musical Money


This planet has �" or rather had �" a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Chapter 6  is another chapter that is being broken down into small segments or sub-chapters to assist in comprehension of what would otherwise be an overly-large idea.  In this chapter, all social ills are connected and shown to be symptoms of a single core mistaken idea or belief.   

Parts of it will be extremely troubling to read.  The unvarnished truth often is.

In the process of examining the evidence, some more long-held and even treasured beliefs will be destroyed.  How you perceive yourself and others will be brought into question.  Your worldview will be challenged and changed.  Some of what we are doing to ourselves and one another (outside of our conscious awareness) will be exposed without compassion.  What we are doing to our world that has brought us into the 6th mass extinction of life on earth, and why we are doing it will be explained.  For these reasons, you are being offered a spoiler alert at the onset.  

Though we are in a very difficult position, and things look grim indeed, there is a way to fix it all, but the window of opportunity is closing.
 
Chapter 16 A
Musical Money:
The underlying problem


Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
Herbert Hoover


Money is an idea, nothing more.  Money should never be confused with wealth.  Wealth is substantive.  It is created by hoarding  anything tangible and considered valuable and rare by other members of a society.

Wealth is subject to the second law of thermodynamics that basically says that things disintegrate with time.  The best wealth consists of things that are rare and do not disintegrate quickly.  We don’t have iron coins because iron rusts and iron isn’t rare.  Gold, on the other hand, is rare and is a far more durable metal.  It takes much, much longer for wear and tear of gold to have its effects.

Money is not subject to the laws of physics because money is an idea.  Little green slips of paper represent that idea, but they do not constitute it.  The “constitution” of money is nothing more than your willingness to believe that nothing is something of value, in the same way that the current form of government is constituted by your willingness to believe that serfdom is freedom, fascism is democracy, and the discarded Constitution is our governing doctrine.  

Money, not being subject to the laws of physics is subject to the principles of economics.  If a dollar bill is torn, it can be returned to the bank where it is replaced with a brand new one.  When you use a debit or credit card, digital bits of information are transferred from your account to the vendor’s account.  Those digital bits of information are also called money.  Checkbook money is digital money.  Almost all money in circulation is digital.  

In addition to being subject to the principles of economics, money can also be understood through the language of mathematics.  Math is a language.  We can use it to learn about how much wealth we have and why money isn’t real.  Economics, on the other hand, as it exists today, is a system of thievery that depends on illusion combined with your ignorance and faith in the existence of something that doesn’t really exist.  It is really anti-economics because it has no interest in economizing.  In fact, economizing could bring down the entire anti-economy.

If we apply the language of simple math to our feudal money system, it becomes obvious that our money system is a confidence game�"a con.  As much as you may want our economy to survive, and as much as you cannot conceive of life without money, the language of simple mathematics assures us that our economy cannot survive, and that we have passed the point of no return.   Because our money is really debt that must be paid back with interest that has never been created into existence, we must grow our economy to create more money so that we can pay the interest that is due.  Math assures us that there will come a point in time when it will be impossible to grow the economy enough to pay the interest on the existing national debt, at which time, if we do nothing beforehand to stop it, everything comes tumbling down.

In math, zero cannot be divided by any number.  In economics, zero can be divided by any number and it always equals an amount of money.  This alone should tell us that money is irrational and a con.  Math doesn’t lie.

 Chapter 16 B
Musical Money:
How the game is played


At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture.
Thomas Jefferson



Earlier, when learning about Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal system, you read about how debt-backed money is really anti-money.  Not only does it have no value, it has negative value because it is really debt.  Additionally, when invented into existence with the enthusiastic abandon that keeping the economy alive requires today, it necessarily causes inflation that is a hidden tax.

To make the inevitable demise of our fiscal paradigm easier to understand, let’s play follow the money.  Say that a government grants a charter to someone who starts a State bank.  The initial investment is a total of one million dollars.  There was a time when some or all of that million dollars had to be in gold, but today, there is no gold requirement as there was before we went off the gold standard.  Now the Federal Reserve claims it holds a Gold Certificate rather than gold .  Whether there is actual gold in Fort Knox to cover it is a matter of some controversy, but it makes no difference either way because The “Full Faith and Credit of the United States” now backs our currency.  Gold doesn’t.

As soon as the bank’s owner deposits its one million anti-dollars into his newly created bank, that million dollars is magically turned into an additional nine million potential dollars.  The bank’s government-approved charter allows it to lend nine dollars for every dollar that it has in its reserves/deposits.  Not only can it lend nine times more money than it has in deposits, but it can do so with interest attached, assuring it a profit.

The bank is a private, for-profit bank, and bank-owners don’t do banking for fun.  They expect profits.  The bank is not owned by the government.  

The bank literally invents nine million dollars into existence by lending it out in the form of digital money or legal tender that the government says can be exchanged for digital money and used to pay taxes.   As money is lent, the bank’s treasurer adds assets to its ledger, which is what digital money is.  Digital money is bits of information about how much invented something (nothing) is in circulation.   The debt instrument (mortgage, car loan, credit card debt, etc.) is an asset for the bank �" even though that asset (the money due) is nothing more than an idea of something that doesn’t really exist except in people’s minds. It has “perceived” value but not “real” value.  It really is “nothing”.

The idea that banks lend out its deposits is a long-held myth.   Deposits are held in reserve so that the bank can lend nine times more than it has in deposits. If a bank’s outstanding loans unexpectedly exceed the given 9:1 ratio, it borrows money from another bank to make up the difference. The lending bank also invents the money (nothing) into existence while maintaining its own 9:1 ratio.  Because money is created through ledger credits, both banks’ initial deposits were really nothing more than ledger credits representing  money  pretended into existence, thus “nothing”.

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys
which it creates out of nothing.”
William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England

Government allows banks to invent money into existence when government doesn’t want to raise taxes.  As  raising taxes have cost politicians their jobs, it borrows from the future (what it believes it will have in the future).   Throughout the history of western civilization, a common need for borrowing came because of war, whether a nation was attacking or defending.  What were all these wars about?  At their core, they were about promoting or defending inequality.  Whether a religious war or an economic war, they were about protecting the elect who needed the disenfranchised to fight their wars for them while not knowing why they were doing what they were doing.   Our money system cannot stand if the people are not ignorant about what it is doing to them.

If a country had no class system, it would need no money.  In America, how much money you have tells others what class you are in.  But all that money that either lifts you or keeps you down is pretend money.  It has no more inherent value than Monopoly money.  It doesn’t exist any more than the legitimacy of the idea that nature grants one part of a single species a superior station in life because it has more money that is really nothing.   Nature doesn’t regulate things that don’t really exist.

When you go to the bank to cash a check, you are paid with pretty green pieces of paper.  These pieces of paper are debt instruments.  Before 1971, if you had a gold or silver certificate, you could exchange it for real gold or silver.   The currency was a promissory note or IOU guaranteeing that if you redeemed it, you would be paid in gold or silver.  That made it a debt instrument.  Today’s currency can only be exchanged for other currency, but because it can be exchanged at all, it is still a promissory note or debt instrument.  The bank promises to give you IOUs in exchange for other IOUs.

The currency in your wallet is prettier than most debt instruments, and certainly easier to carry around than mortgages, but they represent nothing more than fractions of debt.  They are pretty IOUs. They were made pretty on purpose.  They were made to resemble the gold and silver certificates that could be exchanged for gold or silver.  That way you perceive the debt as something that has substantive or “real” positive value even though the opposite is true.  As Alexander Hamilton said in his early letter to Robert Morris as he began concocting his devious scheme, “appearances are important!”.

If your bank lends the nine million pretend debt-funded dollars to ninety borrowers as $100,000 thirty year mortgages, with 5% interest attached, it will have average yearly earnings of close to half a million per year (a 50% return on its initial investment).  Most of that comes in the early stages of payment of the mortgage, so refinancing more than doubles the earnings, which is why people are often encouraged to refinance as soon as there is enough equity in the home.  It also helps that government grants tax advantages for mortgages to encourage borrowing.  

If a 50% per year return on its investment is not enough to satisfy the wants of the banker, the bank can lend the money through credit cards.  At an average of 13%, that will give the bank over one million per year in earnings on the nothing that it created into pretend existence from its initial one million nothings.  (More than 100% return on its original investment.)

What if you were to ask your neighbor if you could borrow a ladder, and your neighbor says sure and gives you a written “IOU” instead?  That wouldn’t help much.  In the world of banking, that’s how it works.  You ask to borrow money and they give you IOUs that you must pay back, plus interest.  Pretty neat setup for the bankers, don’t you think?

In all the nothing or anti-money invented into existence, not a single anti-dollar to cover the interest that is also due has been invented into existence.  Only the principal has been created.  If everyone wanted to pay off their debts at the same time, they couldn’t.  There wouldn’t be enough money to do so.  Because the interest has never been created into existence, there isn’t enough anti-money in circulation to cover the debts.  There never can be for as long as government doesn’t print its own money.

This is how the problem applies to us.  Let’s say that you were one of those who wanted $100,000 to buy a house.  The amount of interest you need to pay on the mortgage will come to $ 93,255.78.  (5% over 30 years).   You received $100,000.00 in debt certificates.  The other $93,255.78 that was never invented into existence but must also be paid has to come from other anti-money, which is why the game is like musical chairs.  Your goal is to get your hands on anti-money before the other guy gets it.  Greed, aggressiveness, dishonesty, and competitiveness are natural consequences of our money system, thus central elements of our culture that is held together by it.

 Chapter 16 C
Musical Money:
The Unnatural Progression to the Natural End



The money power denounces, as public enemies,
all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes
Paraphrased William Jennings Bryan,


For sufficient anti-money to circulate so that borrowers can get enough to pay the principle plus the interest, new loans must be continually made and the money circulated into the economy.  If new loans aren’t created, the economy comes to a halt.  There is no longer enough money in circulation to meet current obligations.  

When enough loans are made to cover principle and interest with some left over, we are told that the economy is growing.  If the economy is growing, inflation is growing because more and more anti-money is put into circulation, meaning that each dollar already in circulation has less and less buying power.  Debts have to keep growing because without debt, there would be no money at all.  Debt IS money.  That’s why money and wealth are two very different things that follow two very different sets of rules.

That’s also why those who understand the money system and have excesses, convert some of their money into wealth in case the whole thing collapses prematurely as a result of the people’s waking up to what is being done to them.

With all of this money-inventing going on, one would think that someone would be carefully overseeing the operation so that things don’t get out of hand, as they did in America’s early days of corrupt money schemes.  

In fact, there are overseers, but how careful or honest they are is quite another matter.  The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 as a cooperative venture between private, for-profit banks and the federal government.  Americans are told that the role of the Federal Reserve (The FED) is to maintain the stability of the financial system.  Notice how the existence of the Federal Reserve immediately caused unrelenting inflation that quickly bankrupted the United States.


Many economists blame the Federal Reserve for The Great Depression, with Nobel laureate Milton Friedman being the most famous . Whether you agree or not, as it was the Fed’s job to prevent such catastrophes, and as the Fed obviously and provably exacerbated the problems, it appears that they weren’t such careful or honest caretakers of our economy.  

At the start of the fiscal year following the start of the Federal Reserve (7/1/1914), the total amount of the national debt amounted to just under 3 billion dollars.    One hundred years later, the national debt is just under 18 trillion, meaning that it grew 6,000 times greater in only 100 years!  All of that debt has interest attached, and that interest is not being created into existence.  That’s a problem.

Considering that from the start of the union under the Constitution, when the government had not yet even assumed the States’ debt toward the revolutionary war effort, until World War II, the debt of the United States was so small by comparison to today’s debt that it isn’t even visible on the chart.  President Andrew Jackson, who understood what banks are and how they operate even paid off the national debt.  Something looks amiss, does it not?  It should.  Something is amiss.

Because of spiraling debt, during the Fiscal Year ending in 2014, the Federal Government spent nearly 431 billion dollars on interest payments alone.  That is 1.2 billion dollars a day (and rising) that it must come up with because that interest has never been invented into existence.   It doesn’t exist.  To pay its bills, the government must get money from somewhere seeing as it refuses to print its own interest-free money.  Meanwhile those who created and maintain such a dangerous state of affairs must use every method possible to prevent us from understanding what has been done to us.  Dishonesty and deceit through lies, manipulation, and obfuscation are built into our money system, thus our culture that is bound together by it.  

The treasury department’s website www.treasurydirect.gov is a striking example of obfuscation and making it extremely difficult for all but the most patient to find usable information, if at all.  For example, to create the chart showing the rise in the national debt, it required downloading many pages of CSV code that it could be converted to XLS to be read by spreadsheet software that could then create a chart that could have been kept updated by a government employee in less than ten seconds a month.  The site allows for spreadsheet downloads, but the downloads are not usable because they put all the information into rows rather than columns that allow one to make sense of the information and easily create charts.  Additionally, after many pages of CSV downloads, many of the fields start showing up as $0.00 so 100% accurate portrayal becomes impossible, forcing the fiscal explorer to extract information using another method, that takes considerably longer because one can’t download pages that give usable information.  No for-profit business would allow such an amateurish site, yet considering the information it makes difficult or impossible to find, one would tend to assume that this is intentional.

Meanwhile, as it tries to cover up its corruption, our government has another problem.  The only way to pay down the debt involves growing the economy, but growing the economy is done by creating more debt.  This requires two distinctly different policies to attack the problem.

In addition to withholding important information from you (such as that money is pretend), and misleading you, and making it extremely difficult to get meaningful information, which are defensive moves, it must also go on the offense.  It must convince you that you really need or want things or events that you don’t really need or want and often can’t afford.

That is why your government is actually the cause of the most recent economic catastrophe.  After the bursting of the dot com bubble, it wanted a lot of money created to spur economic growth.  Mortgages create a lot more money per transaction than small loans.  Americans who could not afford to buy houses were given government-guaranteed mortgages that put more money into circulation even though the consequences of what we were doing were clearly predictable.  Having the taxpayer guarantee (co-sign for) mortgages for those who can’t afford them was such an outrageously stupid plan from the outset, it has every appearance of a deliberate wealth-transfer scheme.  This is true even if the process wasn’t further corrupted by those financiers who insisted that Credit Default Swaps aren’t the insurance policies that they are, thus not subject to regulation; and in spite of those lenders that failed to disclose to consumers when mortgages were actually unmeetable balloon mortages that would put them in bankruptcy in five years, or that the discounted interest rates were only guaranteed for a few years. Dishonesty and greed are innate parts of our cultural paradigm.  The growing debt not only necessitates it, it rewards it, as one easily sees by looking at the massive congratulatory bonuses paid to the financial sectors after its engineered 2008 collapse that forced the taxpayers to pay for the abuses inflicted on them.  

Dishonesty about the threat of the growing national (interest-laden) debt is also why your government wants you to believe the lie that says corporations can pay taxes.  

 
Chapter 16D
Corporations Can’t Pay Taxes

Taxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today.
L Neil Smith "The Unnecessary Depression



If you have ever asked yourself why battered women stay in violent relationships, the answer to that is the same as the answer to those who ask why Americans passively stand by as their own lives are put into greater and greater danger by their own government.  They cannot conceive of how to remain safe while fixing the problem.  In such unequal power contests, it seems more dangerous to leave than to stay.

Lying is a particularly vicious form abuse that is both intellectual and emotional.  Lies, be they of omission or commission, necessarily distort the perceptions of those who believe them.  They cause those who innocently believe the lie to take actions that they wouldn’t consider taking if they knew the truth.  It is a despicable method of manipulation that convinces you to beg for that which you don’t want.

Here is a simple example:

Most say that we want everyone, including corporations, to pay their fair share in taxes. We hear the call often, from elected representatives to pundits.  In fact, you might even think that your own tax load is not excessive. It might even be tempting to say that we cannot be free slaves because most of our money doesn’t go out in tributes (taxes) to the lords or overlords and we justify this by saying that about half of the population doesn’t even pay taxes.  You have even heard the politicians you pay to know these things for you say that.

But have you personally considered the many hidden taxes that you don’t even see?  On top of the state, federal and local sales taxes, there are federal state, and local income taxes, payroll taxes, and hidden taxes built into the price of things like gasoline, cigarettes and alcohol.  The average hidden tax built into every gallon of gasoline you buy is currently 48.8 cents per gallon for gas and 54.4 cents per gallon for diesel.  At this writing, there is a bill in Congress that would increase the federal part of those taxes by fifteen cents per gallon.

Then there are the thirty-five percent corporate taxes.  These are also hidden taxes.  Corporations are in essence, pass-through entities.  In spite of a corporation’s alleged personhood, corporations don’t really pay taxes like real people do. When they pay taxes, that tax is added to the cost of doing business, so that the taxes are reimbursed upon sale of the goods or services to the next buyer in the supply chain.  This goes all the way through the supply chain, down to the consumer who is an actual person�"the only person who can actually “pay” taxes, having no one to pass them on to.

Take a minute to follow the taxes on a car�"from its start point to the point where you pay sales and registration taxes.  The process begins in the iron mines of Minnesota where mining companies extract the ore from the earth. They sell the ore to the foundries.  Included in the price of the ore are the mining company’s taxes: Federal (35%), State (9.8%), separate utility and various communications taxes�"federal, state, and local.  Then there are the payroll taxes, (mandatory employer paid employee taxes for employee benefits such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid , kept hidden to keep workers from complaining as they would were see the real amount being paid for them), Workers Compensation, Unemployment, and most recently, health insurance that the court says is a tax, though most companies like the mining companies already offered health insurance.  All of this increases the price of the products.

The mining company hires shippers to ship the ore, and they have the same numerous taxes that are built into the price of shipping, plus the hidden fuel tax.  This increases the price of shipping.

The foundry buys the ore with all those taxes added into the price it pays for that ore and shipping.   First it deducts the cost of doing business.  That cost includes all the taxes paid by the mine and the shipper. When it writes the checks for the ore and shipping, it includes the relevant portion of the mine’s and shipper’s taxes that were passed on to it, reimbursing the suppliers for their tax payments.  It adds that amount (including the reimbursed taxes) to its own cost of doing business, and adds its own taxes, and then prices its goods so that it can make a profit, before using a shipping company to ship the product on to the machine shops.

The machine shops pay the suppliers including repayment for the relevant part of the hidden taxes they paid on the tax-inflated price before adding their taxes and profits and sending the inflated value down the chain.  They too hire shipping companies who add their taxes as the parts are sent to the manufacturer.  The automobile manufacturer reimburses the machine shops, shippers’ and other suppliers’ taxes plus pays them their profits before adding its own taxes.  It too hires shippers to take the car to the dealership.  

The dealership reimburses the manufacturer for its taxes and other costs as it buys the car.  It is also a company that pays taxes, so the price of the car includes those taxes as well.  Then you buy the car.  That is the point where all those taxes are actually paid.  They are paid by YOU, a human, the only type of a person who CAN pay taxes.  Only you don’t get to have your taxes reimbursed, because the passing on of taxes ends with you, an actual person�"a serf.  

A serf, the consumer, doesn’t get to pass any taxes onto anyone.  The noble class can get their businesses to own the tax-deductible limousines, corporate jets, and even get-away retreats and exotic “working” vacations, thus absolving themselves of taxes and expenses that you cannot avoid.

When you go to your Motor Vehicles office to pay sales tax on your new car, you are also paying taxes on all those many thousands of dollars of other “hidden” taxes that were long ago reimbursed to the companies who built their taxes into the cost of their goods and services.  You think that you are paying the sales tax on a $30,000 car.  You never see how many thousands of dollars of hidden taxes you just paid another tax on.  Estimates go as high as 80% of the cost of goods, and those estimates came before the high court decreed that emloyer-paid health insurance is a tax.   This would make it much higher, and in all cases, the percent is dependent on the nature of the final product and the number of companies in any given supply chain.  

When you pay the sales and registration taxes on your new $30,000 car, you are actually paying taxes on at least $24,000 of reimbursed corporate taxes.  The car would have cost $6,000 without them. Quite a racket, wouldn’t you say?

Understanding some industries have more layers and some have less, look around your house.  Apply the same thought process to the food in your pantry and refrigerator, the clothes you wear, and the furniture, appliances, technology, communication, and energy costs in your home.  The hidden taxes make what you buy artificially expensive because your government is hiding taxes from you, thereby intentionally inflating the cost of goods and services which keeps the economy growing, while keeping you ignorant of what it is doing to you.   If all taxes were sales taxes, America wouldn’t be in the position it is in today.  We would have overthrown the government long ago.

That’s not the end of the hidden taxes you pay.  As you have seen, tax exemptions for religious organizations and various other industries are hidden taxes.  Someone has to make up for that which others are not paying.  

Inflation is another hidden tax.  Inflation is usually seen as being caused by doing what the early American governments did when they issued unsustainable amounts of paper money in their schemes to defraud the most vulnerable.  Our government is doing the same thing, but it is doing more.  Not only is it intentionally deflating the value of our currency by encouraging the printing of excess money through its quantitative easing programs, it is inflating the cost of merchandise through hidden taxes, making things less affordable.  It attacks you on both sides, even as it works to repress workers’ wages while not limiting executive’s outlandish compensation packages.  Those are hidden taxes on you.  That’s why car loans, that were typically paid for with two or three-year loans 20 years ago, went to four years, then five, and now seven years, and why many are now forced to lease or not have a car at all.

Unfair tax rates create another hidden tax.  When the wealthiest Americans have an effective tax rate of 0% to 15% depending on their investments, while the typical American wage-earner has a tax rate of 25%, who is making up for the wealthiests’ missing taxes?  You are.  Tax advantages for the wealthiest are a hidden tax for you.  It is not very different from the early Massachusetts aristocrats paying their taxes with worthless scraps of paper while hard working people were required to come up with precious metals or lose everything.  Our entire tax code is a fraudulent scheme designed to transfer wealth and freedom from you to the wealthiest and most powerful.

There are many more ways of hiding hidden taxes from you.

Now think about how America is now in the same state that the early Massachusetts government was.  Because of the intentionally introduced inflation that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the not-wealthy, Massachusetts destroyed its own economy as our has been destroyed.  For us, because of hidden taxes, American labor and products are far more expensive than much of the global marketplace can bear.  By not understanding the nature of money, thus failing to object to hidden taxes, and even demanding them in what we were told is fairness, “We the People” actually forced businesses to outsource or automate at the cost of our own jobs. That all part of the American delusion.

Keeping you ignorant and begging for what you don’t really want is one of the ways your government stays in power.   This system of deceiving you to make you demand things that actually hurt you would not be possible were it not for your emotions being used against you.  Emotions block reason.  This is a known fact.

When you understand that those politicians, newscasters, and political operatives who throw reasons to be afraid or angry your way, are telling a lie (whether overt or covert), you will be able to step back and recognize that something dark and unseen is in the works.

Fear, anger, and the patriotism response work best when you are being manipulated, because you learned this in mandatory education.  Truthfully, any strong emotion will do because emotions cover the places where the truth is hiding, obscuring it.  Keeping you embroiled in your emotions is the art of keeping the underlying lie alive.

So in your enthusiasm and pride in your new car, you pay $30,000 for a car that, has a true cost value of about $6,000.  As you do that, you are also paying for excessive executive compensation packages (average 15.2 million per year in 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute) for people who are in a lower tax bracket than you. You are also paying for lobbying activities that promote things that you may not want to support as aggressively.  This means that the car’s real value is considerably less than $6,000.

Still, You feel joy and pride (necessary emotion keeping you in the dark) about owning your new vehicle.  When you lose your outsourced or automated job the following week, you feel fear (necessary emotion keeping you in the dark).  The next time you fill your new car’s gas tank so you can look for a job, you think about Exxon and get angry because it doesn’t pay enough taxes and gets subsidies on top of that.  (Necessary emotion keeping you in the dark.)  But unless you understand how you are being manipulated, you still haven’t figured out that it was the hidden taxes that caused the price of goods and labor to climb so high that businesses invested in automation, prison labor, or went offshore.  This was done at the people’s direct urging, taking their own jobs with them.  Both political parties support this type of thievery.   In fact, political parties exist to keep you in the dark.  That’s the primary purpose of the two major parties and why they are so filled with messages of fear.

You were set up.  You could and should have been taught this in a simple high school economics class, but you weren’t.  Our money system is an ongoing con and public schooling is an integral part of it.  It is the nature of our government and our society.  If Americans knew how much they are paying in taxes, America would have been in rebellion eighty years ago, and our voices would have been heard.  But when a lie is in operation, we begin working against our own self-interests.

That’s what battering husbands do to their chosen targets.  They set them up.  They say one thing but do another.  There are two sets of rules at play.  Battering spouses take advantage of (capitalize on) the learned ignorance that blinds their victims to truth and encourages them to unknowingly work very hard against their own self-interests and in the bounteous interests of the abuser.  That’s the general nature of the trap that has ensnared us. That’s why this book is so important.  That’s why we must walk out of the American delusion.

Isn’t it interesting that dishonesty was non-existent in the Iroquois nation because the very act was viewed as a threat to the community.  Domestic violence was also unknown among the Iroquois (until after the European invasion, destruction of the elegant people, and the introduction of alcohol).  Those who work with battered women have long known that there are parallels between our governmental model and domestic abuse.  Abusers follow the same road map.  They vaguely perceive the second set of rules and they do unto their victims as they see government doing unto them.

The government needs your anti-money, and if encouraging you to believe a lie makes that possible, then it must actively encourage you to believe the lie, because the economy must grow in order to create the pretend money that is needed to pay the pretend money that was never created into existence even  though it would one day be needed to pay the interest on something that never existed in the first place.

“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the constitution,  pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.  If the currency issued by the people were no good, then the bonds would be no good either”
Thomas Edison, New York Times, 1921
 Chapeter 16 E
Musical Money
When the artificial meets the real.


Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy.
  Franklin D. Roosevelt


To keep the economy growing sufficiently for the government to pay its ultimately unpayable debts, population levels must keep increasing to create new consumers/borrowers/tax-payers, which is why your government wants immigration .  Ideally, those immigrants will be from the higher and more educated classes.  But if the American worker is not willing to work for the cheap wages that illegal aliens will accept, that is helpful as well because it punishes the American worker and forces the cost of labor down, which is good for employers that are good for the economy.  It’s the old carrot and the stick approach.

The economy can’t survive without adequate population growth because we have natural limits on what we can or are willing to consume.  To increase consumption to the point required without increasing the population size, we would each have to consume thousands of pairs of jeans or shoes or televisions or rooms full of furniture.  Growing populations also create scarcity of real estate, and scarcity is good for raising prices, and that is good for the economy.

The prices of goods and services need to keep increasing, which is why all those hidden taxes are so important.  Hidden taxes are great for growth of the GDP.   

Even with increasing population, consumers have to be enticed to needlessly consume, and to fill garbage dumps with our excesses, while raping and pillaging the earth to find new resources to meet the demands of the always-hungry economy that can never be satiated.  Advertising not only works effectively toward meeting this goal, but it also adds to the growth of the GDP.  Advertising is ultimately a business whose sole purpose is to manipulate you into doing something that you would not otherwise do.  Anything and everything that can be leveraged is required to be converted to profits that mean more anti-money�"even if your own mind is leveraged without your awareness of just how your mind is being leveraged.

Economic and population growth is the cause of our growing poverty, unemployment and underemployment.  Manufacturers, who have thrived through outsourcing and insourcing  labor, have found another less expensive way to increase growth.  Machines are cheaper and more reliable than non-slave human labor.  Machines of the caliber being talked about for manufacturing require massive loans and debt is money.  Automation is putting more and more people out of work or into low-income jobs.  As increasing automation combined with increasing levels of outsourcing and insourcing replaces American labor, what will keep the economy afloat?  The economy can’t grow without consumers.  That’s a problem.

The economy doesn’t care if you are holding two or three minimum wage jobs where you have no benefits and earn less than you did at your old job.  It doesn’t care if you are a college graduate who is in debt from student loans but can’t find employment in your field because universities are credentialing more students than the economy can absorb.  The economy doesn’t care if your children don’t have enough to eat.  That’s not the economy’s problem.  The economist’s job is to invent a way to counter all of that, such as creating cheaper merchandise of poorer quality to keep you consuming (spending) more in the long-run, but at smaller short-term prices.  


 Chapter 16F
Musical Money
The end of the game :  The Late Great Planet Earth



Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever
in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
Kenneth Boulding, "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth"



The down side of all of this economy-growing is that earth is a finite place.  The earth has a mathematical number of usable cubic feet of earth and available resources including breathable air, and the fixed rules of arithmetic are very different from the vague and unworkable rules of economics.  

The earth cannot support an infinitely increasing population or the increased destruction of resources that a growing population demands.

Paul Hawken of Geowords.org writes “Exponential population growth has not disappeared but is occurring at a slower rate. The rate of the world's annual population growth dropped 42% between 1963 and 2002, from 2.2% to 1.28%. This is good news, but during the same period the population base rose by about 94%, from 3.2 billion to 6.2 billion. The bad news is that this drop in the rate of population increase is somewhat like learning the truck heading straight at you has slowed from 100 kilometers per hour (kph) to 58 kph while its weight almost doubled.

“An exponential growth rate of 1.28% may seem small, but it adds about 79 million people per year to the world's population. This is roughly equal to adding (1) another New York City every month, (2) a Germany every year, and (3) a United States every 3.6 years. Despite the drop in the rate of population growth, the larger base of population means that 79 million people were added in 2002, compared to 69 million in 1963, when the world's population growth rate reached its peak.”

These new and very real people need places to live, so they build houses that do grow the economy, but they leave less room for growing food necessary to feed a growing population.  Combine the demands of population increases, with less expensive but poorer farming practices that use chemical fertilizers that destroy topsoil and aquifers, and things start looking bleak.  Combine that with man-made climate change that is destroying arable land, potable water, as well as land, air and water species, and we are heading into disaster.  Even if our fiscal paradigm that caused the looming disaster wasn’t heading toward certain collapse, the ecological damage can no longer be lightly dismissed.  We are already at the tipping point according to the UN global conference on climate change held in Lima, Peru in 2014.

Because of our money system’s insatiable demands, our country is turning into desert.  About 40% of the earth's green spaces are currently threatened with desertification, and that includes about 40% in the US.”   Much of that could be averted by better animal husbandry and farming practices, but that wouldn’t grow the economy that MUST grow regardless of anything that it destroys in the process.  

Better eco-friendly farming practices would be more expensive.   Unfortunately, they would also feed fewer people.  But as it requires money to buy the food that is becoming more scarce, thus more expensive, without an intervention by the people affected, the day will soon come when only those who can afford it will be able to buy food.  During The Great Depression, food rotted in the fields while people went hungry because of lack of money.  At the same time, farmers were being prevented from growing crops as well as paid by the government to not-grow crops in order to create scarcity that would increase the cost of food so that the economy could grow in spite of the long lines at soup kitchens.  

That is feudalism’s demand.  The economy MUST grow.  The rich MUST get richer.  As Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) said, capitalism requires that the larger part of the race of laborers must die of poverty related causes.  He accepted it as a fact of life.  Inhumanity to man is built into our fiscal system.

That growing population also needs drinking water, but that is also diminishing because of increased population, climate change, poor farming practices, mining, and the search for energy. Though boaters still roar across Lake Mead, the water level at the Hoover Dam in 2010 was 130 feet lower than it was in 2000 .  But if that weren’t enough, in 2012 alone, the EPA authorized an additional 1,500 aquifers for destruction through pollution by mining companies and energy companies that use fracking that sometimes turn faucets into blowtorches. The economy must keep growing no matter the cost to life itself.  Our fiscal paradigm is inherently anti-life.      

Globally, the problem with water is so severe that Peter Brabeck, the CEO of Nestlé, recently said that water should not be considered a human right.  It should be turned over to private corporations like any other essential raw material.  Corporations will manage them better, he says, because they will do so for profit.  He insists that only corporations understand the true value of water .  Perhaps a thirsty poor person would disagree with Mr. Brabeck.  His statement is a warning of things to come as resources become more and more scarce.  The economy is more important than life itself and the wealthy are more valuable than the growing pool of poor people.  (Poor now including the middle class.) That is the nature of the beast that is consuming us and our world�"outside of our common awareness.

Exponentially growing populations need exponentially more natural resources to build houses, and toward that end globally, the rain forests in South America, Asia, and Africa, often called the earth's lungs, are being decimated.  Without healthy trees around the world, we have no oxygen to breathe, just as without breathing beings that exhale CO2, trees have no CO2 to breathe.  But as we are putting CO2 into the atmosphere at record rates, the trees may survive, but our survival is not so certain.  Then again, neither is the survival of much plant life so certain.  The last time the earth faced dramatic increases in CO2 levels (that are not even comparable to our rapid increase), leaf-eating insect life surged.  Without leaves, plants cannot breathe.

Speaking of CO2, in May of 2013, the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) announced that CO2 levels hit 400 parts per million, a level not seen for 10 million years, long before humans inhabited the earth and there was virtually no ice on the earth.  

But it’s not just CO2.  It’s the other greenhouse gasses that are also dangerous and have caused a crisis in the Arctic that is creating collateral damage in the rest of the world.  Here is a chart that shows what has happened to greenhouse gasses since the year zero












The methane spike is now being seen as perhaps the greatest threat.  A molecule of methane is twenty-five times more potent than carbon dioxide.  It’s very flammable.  If the arctic regions, like the tundra, lakes and ocean bottoms warm enough to release the gasses, as it is already doing, it could spell a very quick end to life in short order.  Already dozens of huge craters from exploding methane releases are being discovered in Russia’s tundra because the arctic is warming faster than any place on earth.

In spite of this, the economy must grow.  We are told that our survival depends on this.  In fact, if we dare look at the obvious, the opposite is true: our demise does.

In September of 2014, world scientists issued its strongest warnings to date.  Because of excess CO2 in the atmosphere, our oceans, that act like a sponge of the excess CO2, are turning acidic .  They are becoming more acidic at the fastest rate in 300 million years, and scientists studying the matter are saying that the sixth mass extinction in the history of earth has already begun.  We are losing species at a previously unheard of rate.  This loss is not from volcanic activity or roving asteroids as past mass extinction events were.  This extinction event is provably caused by human activity as we work industriously to grow the economy.  The growth 0f greenhouse gasses began during the industrial revolution.

The Center for Biological Diversity posts this on its website:  

“It’s frightening but true: Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals �" the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century. ”

NASA’s site for children  says this:  “Algae and plankton are at the bottom of the food chain. Plankton includes many different kinds of tiny animals, plants, or bacteria that just float and drift in the ocean. Other tiny animals such as krill (sort of like little shrimp) eat the plankton. Fish and even whales and seals feed on the krill. In some parts of the ocean, krill populations have dropped by over 80 percent. … What would happen if there were very little plankton or krill? The whole food web could come unraveled.”

Also in 2014, the WWF issued yet another alarm.  The most recent “Living Planet Report” states up front that it is not for the faint hearted.  We are catching fish faster than they can reproduce.  We are cutting trees faster than they can reproduce.  We are emitting CO2 faster than the earth can absorb it.  We are living on an unsustainable path.  We are living beyond the boundaries that allow us to live on our finite earth with its finite ecosystem.  We are behaving as if we have more than one earth to provide for us. The report tells us:

 The planetary boundaries concept defines nine regulating processes that keep the Earth in a stable state where life can thrive. Transgressing any of the nine boundaries could generate abrupt or irreversible environmental changes.
 Three appear to have been crossed already: biodiversity loss, climate change and nitrogen.
 Urgent and sustained global efforts could still keep temperature rises below 2°C �" the level defined as “safe” �" but our window of opportunity is fast closing.
 Nitrogen is essential to global food security, but nitrogen pollution has severe impacts on aquatic ecosystems, air quality, biodiversity, climate, and human health.

In the introduction to the report, Marco Lambertini, the Director General of WWF International says:

“One key point that jumps out is that the Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures more than 10,000 representative populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has declined by 52 per cent since 1970.  (terrestrial species 39%, fresh water species, 76%, and marine species 39% of those species followed).  Put another way, in less than two human generations, population sizes of vertebrate species have dropped by half. These are the living forms that constitute the fabric of the ecosystems which sustain life on Earth �" and the barometer of what we are doing to our own planet, our only home. We ignore their decline at our peril.

“…We are using nature’s gifts as if we had more than just one Earth at our disposal. By taking more from our ecosystems and natural processes than can be replenished, we are jeopardizing our very future. Nature conservation and sustainable development go hand-in-hand. They are not only about preserving biodiversity and wild places, but just as much about safeguarding the future of humanity … indeed, our very survival.

“…  Things look so worrying that it may seem difficult to feel positive about the future. Difficult, certainly, but not impossible �" because it is in ourselves, who have caused the problem, that we can find the solution. Now we must work to ensure that the upcoming generation can seize the opportunity that we have so far failed to grasp, to close this destructive chapter in our history, and build a future where people can live and prosper in harmony with nature.”

Because of climate change, climatologists are warning us that warming oceans will cause storms to be more severe and do more damage.  We can expect a rising death toll and more loss of our coastal lands.  Because of droughts, we can expect more forest fires and brush fires.   We can expect droughts to bring both water and food shortages.  Though we are used to hearing of droughts and food shortages in distant places, these things are already coming to America.  We can expect them to get worse.  Food and water shortages cause the price of food and water to increase, and that raises the GDP, which is good for the economy while bad for life.  The economy is more important than life.  It MUST grow.

Other species that were once a part of our natural diet have become too toxic to eat, except in very limited quantities.  The EPA already puts out warnings about the many types of fish that are now dangerous to humans because of mercury poisoning that comes from industrial pollution.  Even farm-raised salmon is listed as dangerous because it may contain PCB's  from industrial pollution and improper disposal methods of dangerous chemicals. It’s not just CO2 emissions that are killing us.  Industrial pollution of land and water also adds to the threats to our continued existence on earth.

What is amazing is that there are many Americans who deny that all of this is a man-made disaster in spite of the volumes of evidence to the contrary.  Perhaps they look around and do not see the pollution, or do not feel the damage to their lungs as they breathe because the pollution has been outsourced to China.  Many say that we need more jobs no matter what the threat to the environment.  Others say that they will be raptured before they have to face the tribulation to come.  These people might do well to remember “The Golden Rule” as they wait for their rapture, and consider how unnecessary those jobs will be when there is no more life on earth to perform them.  They might also consider the inverse of Pascal’s Wager .

We are not paying enough attention to the real costs that are never factored into the economists’ calculations.  If they were, it would be too expensive to produce products.  That’s why taxpayers usually pick up most of the tab for a corporation’s misdeeds.  They are not a concern for the feudal lords whose only responsibility is to turn whatever they can into money, no matter the cost.  What has happened to us that we are not talking about the known and rapidly growing threat to life on earth�"OUR earth?  Why the silence?  Are we in denial?  Do we think that it is “their” job to fix it?  “They” won’t.  “They” can’t.  Their job is to produce profits.

Here are some questions that could begin dialogues with your friends and neighbors:  

 Why are we using money to buy the end of life on earth?
 Why are we going to jobs we don’t necessarily like when doing those jobs is destroying our habitat?
 If you can’t divide zero in math, then why does zero divided by any number always equal some amount of money when economists do the math?
 Is our culture sane?

 Chapter 16 G
Musical Money:
Some mistaken beliefs
that are leading us astray


Hell, that's why they make erasers.
Clarence Darrow


The last chapter’s warnings address only the environmental degradation that we are doing by being rampant consumers who thoughtlessly drive cars that throw tons of toxins into the air, and go to jobs that destroy our ecology and promise to destroy our anti-economy.  They don’t show the rest.  We need to look at more.

We are harming ourselves and jeopardizing life on earth because we are carrying some invalid beliefs.  If we are to escape the trap we are in, we must look at those beliefs and release them.

We have been conditioned to want inequality.  Ask everyone you know if they would be willing to give up their inequality in exchange for equality.  You will find that people instinctively recoil from the thought.  They can’t grasp what equality is.  Americans see equality as a threat.  In fact, it is inequality that is the threat.  What besides mandatory public schooling could cause us to fear equality�"something that we say America holds as a core value?

The underlying belief supporting our willingness to destroy the earth in the name of inequality is the belief that money is an incentive to encourage us to achieve more, thus earn superior status in an unequal society.  We believe that it’s good for our society and that it’s good for the economy.

Let go of that belief!  It has been proven to be a dangerous myth.

Many studies have shown conclusively that if money is used as incentive for menial tasks, they work well enough, just as the carrot and the stick model says it should.  But as soon as the most rudimentary cognitive thinking skills are required to perform a task, money serves as a disincentive.  When problem-solving abilities are involved in a job, in all studies across the board, those who were paid more performed worse.  Remember this as you think of CEO and hedge fund manager incomes as they relate to the most recent economic crisis for which they were paid massive bonuses as a reward for defrauding the American taxpayers.

Dan Pink gave an excellent TED  talk about how this occurs.  It is titled “The Puzzle of Motivation” and it can be viewed on YouTube.     In it, he explains that the studies prove that humans are driven by three pillars of motivation.  

 Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives.
 Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters.
 Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.   

How different these three pillars are from the unworkable carrot and stick approach to success.  Money is provably interfering with our ability to live satisfying and rewarding lives, and preventing us from doing what we most love�"being in service of something larger than ourselves.  Money is making us stupid.  We are biologically wired to find the greatest joy and satisfaction in being of service.  Perhaps that’s why the Indians were spoken of as being considerably happier than those under European-style government, and perhaps that’s why six young girls spoken of in the introduction found their lives transformed through the discovery of a “natural” form of government.

Another invalid belief is the one that asserts that higher taxes for the rich will cost us jobs.  That is absolutely wrong as well, and the math proves it.  It’s just another story you have been told to get you to demand something that you don’t really want: transfer of your wealth to the wealthiest few who are convincing you to defend your own inequality with your life so that they can retain their superior status.  

 A TED talk by Nick Hanauer is a must see video that will help you remove your misconceptions.  He (a billionaire) explains how rich people don't create jobs.  Consumers do.  "Since 1980, the incomes of the top one percent have more than tripled while their effective tax rate has dropped by 50%.  If this reduction in tax rate was going to produce more jobs, then we should be drowning in jobs, yet unemployment and underemployment is at record highs”. Lower tax rates for the rich do not equate to job creation.  They equate to more wealth for the rich, and a growing divide between the rich and the poor.  “If the typical American family still retained the same share of income that they did in 1970, they’d earn $45,000.00 more a year.”  Continuing, he says that capitalists like him hire people as a last resort, and then only in service to consumer demand.  Consumers are the true job creators.  

As you read earlier, government can subsidize a factory that makes widgets, but if no one wants to buy widgets, or no one can afford to buy the widgets, the factory will close.  Though this talk brought forth storms of protest from certain quarters, Mr. Hanauer’s conclusion is further supported by the bipartisan Congressional Research Service.   

You can see the informative talk on YouTube if you search for: Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs".   

These are just two more destructive mistaken beliefs.  Many of our beliefs are mistaken.  Mistaken beliefs cause us to make mistakes.  They cause us to behave in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise entertain.  How much of what we are demanding is based on untested assumptions, superstitious nonsense, or outright lies we innocently swallowed because we trusted our teachers and our government?

So far we have seen what only four mistaken beliefs are doing to us.  Those mistaken beliefs are:

 Money is something
 Inequality is good
 Money is a good motivator: the carrot and stick approach works
 Tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs

In these four provably mistaken beliefs, we can see that we are working industriously to make ourselves miserable and poorer as we take advantage of others and fight over nothing that was created into existence by the mere stroke of a pen in a ledger.  That’s a lot of misery for nothing.


 
Chapter 16 H
Musical Money
What we are doing to ourselves


But when Fate destines one to ruin it begins by
blinding the eyes of his understanding.
James Fraser


We have been carefully conditioned to want what we don’t really want, through government policies that look first to the economy, never seeing or considering the harmful social consequences of its policies.   Modern feudalism harms people physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally.  It tears apart families.  It does brain damage.  It destroys our social fabric, and that is devastating for social animals like humans.

Wealth inequality is part and parcel to America’s fiscal paradigm, and it has very quantifiable effects.  Its effects on human beings are crushing.  When examining the effects of wealth inequality in America, we are also looking at the effects of social inequality, America’s class system, because in America, wealth, anti-money, and social status are treated as if they are the same thing.      

Truly disturbing are studies that look at mental illness in relationship to income inequality in developed nations.  In study after study, the more wealth inequality in a country, the higher the mental illness rate will be.  Italy and Japan have about an 8% rate, but in America, the mental illness rate is nearly 30%�"the highest in the world.  The NIH (National Institutes of Health) conducted a study of thousands of adults over several years and found that nearly 50% of Americans have had a mental illness in their lives.  Other studies show that number is growing, in both numbers and severity in the nature of the illnesses.  Mental illness is now the greatest cause of disability in the United States, and suicide has moved up to the top 10 list of causes of death.  More now die from suicide than traffic accidents.

More inequality leads to deteriorated social relations and health issues.  The US has, by far, the worst health and social problems of any developed nation.

The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than any of the next 27 wealthiest countries, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control:  “Higher U.S. mortality rates are due entirely, or almost entirely, to high mortality among less advantaged groups.  To put it bluntly, babies born to poor moms in the U.S. are significantly more likely to die in their first year than babies born to wealthier moms.”

Comparing murder rates in high, medium and low wealth-inequality countries, the homicide rate in the United States in 2009 was 50 per million population compared with 18 in Canada and 5 in Japan.  Wealth and income inequality is endangering our lives.

Countries with higher wealth inequality have higher prison populations.  The US has, by far, the highest percentage of people in prison.  That number has increased 780% since 1980.  The prison population overwhelmingly impacts the poor Black and Hispanic populations, and the reason for that is discussed in detail later in it’s own chapter.  Throughout the world, there is a direct correlation between wealth inequality and a nation’s prison population.

High school drop-out rates are also associated with income inequality. The U.S., which once had some of the highest graduation rates of any developed country, now ranks 22nd out of 27 developed countries.

Looking at social mobility, meaning the ability of someone to rise out of the class of birth to make it to the top, again, the US is bottoming out the chart.  It turns out that the father’s income level is more telling of the children’s future income level than any other indicator.  Gone are the days when we can tell our children that if they study, work hard, and go to college, they can rise to the top.  It’s just not true any more.  The United States stands out as being the least likely country where someone can arise above his or her station of birth.

In more unequal countries, there is less trust.  Trust is the basic cement that holds societies together, whether that society is a marriage, a family unit, a community, a nation.  To see the level of trust in America, one need only look at the three major entertainment news networks, or even the congressional approval polls that have shown approval levels as low as 6-8%.

In “Bridging the Gaps”, the World Health Organization states, “The world’s most ruthless killer and the greatest cause of suffering on earth is poverty. … Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, encompassing inability to satisfy basic needs, lack of control over resources, poor health, and lack of education in that which children must learn in order to survive in their world.”  Poverty is alienating, and for a social animal, such as a human, it is extremely stressful.  There are now traceable and observable, direct and indirect effects of poverty on the development and maintenance of healthy emotional, behavioral and psychiatric problems.  

Income and social inequality leads to a general dysfunction in all areas.  In fact, it is quite visible, using math as a guide, to see that the American Dream has morphed into a Dystopia.  For a visual explanation of how we are harming ourselves by demanding that which is harming us, please watch the YouTube video titled “Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies”.   As Wilkinson said in his TED talk from which I drew the above information, if you want to live the American Dream, move to Denmark.

Studies at UC Berkley are showing more dimensions to wealth inequality.  In a series shown on PBS, researchers demonstrated that rich people have less empathy than poor people, perhaps pointing to why it is no longer possible for a poor person to rise above the parents’ social status.  If you have too much empathy because you are poor and you are intimately familiar with the harm poverty does to people, do you have what it takes to enter the cut-throat world of business where accumulation of anti-money is more important than life itself?  

A different study at UC Berkley shows that rich people are meaner than poor people.  They see themselves as naturally entitled.  They are more likely to be dishonest, to cheat, to take candy that belongs to children, to bark orders to the lower class, and even fail to yield for pedestrians at marked pedestrian cross walks.  In one study, those who are better off financially, say those making around $150,000 to $200,000 a year, were three to four times more likely to cheat than those making $15,000 a year or less.  In this study, the incentive was nothing more than a $50.00 cash award.  Remember here that those making a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year are not the wealthiest Americans.  A dark American secret is that the wealthiest have incomes and wealth growth in the tens of billions of dollars per year�"each.  The wealthiest one percent of Americans owns more than eighty percent of America’s wealth.  The bottom half own only one half of one percent of America’s wealth.  

Those at the lower income levels have considerably shorter life expectancies. “For example, when traveling along the distance of nearly 12 miles on the Washington,
DC, Metro from downtown to Montgomery County, Maryland, life expectancy of the local population segment rises about a year and a half for each mile traveled. Poor black men at one end of the journey have a life expectancy of 57 years, and rich white men at the other end have a life expectancy of 76.7 years.”   This means that some men who pay into social security their whole working lives will not receive a penny from the program they funded, while the wealthiest, who pay into social security the first minute or two of a work year, will receive the most from the program.   

These social problems are not solely related to race or to poverty itself.   As said earlier, they are related to perceived status in society.  This can be seen when looking at more egalitarian Sweden with far lower income inequality, where PhDs have a higher life expectancy than those with masters degrees, who have a higher life expectancy than those with bachelors degrees, and so on.  Our love of our inequality is killing us.   

 
Chapter 16 I
Musical Money
The nefarious purpose of poverty


I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,�"that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
Abraham Lincoln



One of the saddest parts of living in our culture is that because of our irrational fear of not having enough of nothing, the only way that we, ourselves, can get our hands on more nothing is to do so on the backs of others�"as opposed to on the shoulders of others.  The only way that you can have the anti-dollar in your pocket is if someone else doesn’t have it.  The only way for you to be comfortable in your life is to force misery on others who are farther down the chain of wealth-based worthiness.  That’s how the game of musical money is played.

At the bottom of the social stack are the poor.  Poverty is not only an unavoidable consequence of our money system, it’s an essential part of it.  Capitalism cannot work without poverty.  Capitalism rests on two principles.  One is the principle of supply and demand.  But the second more sinister principle is the failed carrot and stick principle.  

Poverty advertises for fear of poverty, and fear provably blocks our cognitive thinking ability that would help us end it.  This keeps us locked in mental prisons that we are unable to see.  This is part of the global delusion.

On the surface, this is tied in with our mistaken belief in the effectiveness of the carrot and the stick worldview, where money is thought to be an effective motivator that makes people more productive even though it doesn’t.  Too many think that those who do not have much didn’t work hard enough.  To be fair, that’s not true.  The social infrastructure that would allow them to be contributing members of our soceity has been systematically taken from them.  

When a sub-culture is systematically abused, that culture is no different than a child who grows up in an abusive home.  Real damage is done to the child.  They grow into damaged adults , and that makes them dangerous for all.  When we systematically force poverty onto people, we do real damage to them and us.  Many lash out in anger and others do what they have to do to survive.

If somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.  If I got tired I’d stop, have a glass of water, and choke him some more.
Miles Davis (black musician)

Is our inability to experience empathy when bad things happen to those with less wealth or social status the reason that we are so insensitive to the fact that 14.5% (25% in large cities) of households in the United States are “food insecure” directly because of America’s money policy?  Or is it something more menacing?

In an Orwellian move that would have made the Ministry of Truth (MinTru) proud, the USDA defines food insecurity as when “food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food”.  That sounds a lot like hunger, and it used to be called hunger.  But food insecure sounds better, doesn’t it?  It doesn’t make you think.  The word “hunger” does.  Hunger is reall and everyone has experienced it.  Food insecure doesn’t draw out the empathy.  Just write a check to make the pain go away, even though the check makes things worse in the long run because it supports and reinforces the fiscal and social policies that created poverty in the first place.  Do you see what has happened to us�"what has been DONE TO US in the name of money?

To make this problem understandable for those not “food insecure”, next time you go to a family reunion or pot-luck picnic, have the group choose which 14.5% of attendees will not be allowed to eat that day so that others can have more food at their expense. If you live in an urban area, make it 25%, or 30% if you live in an urban area in New Mexico or Mississippi.  Make sure that you include at least 22% of the children.  Be sure to increase that amount if you live in an urban area.  If you want to know what it’s like to be a black child or the parent of a black child in much of America, where one out of four black families are food insecure) make the number of children 36%.    Require them all to sit outside the group and watch the gluttony and merriment without being able to participate.  At the end of the meal, conspicuously throw the leftovers into the garbage.  

Using fear and purposely inflicted shame as weapons, those who were part of mandatory public schooling were carefully and stealthily taught how to not-see and not care about we are doing to ourselves and our fellow man in the name of money and inequality.  If we do see or do care in spite of all our training, we don’t know how to fix it because we have been trained to not-trust ourselves to figure out a way to fix it (fear), and we have learned that it is not our place to fix it (fear), and we have learned how to turn off our shame that would inspire us to fix it.  We believe that we must leave the fixing part to the government that is always looking out for our best interests, which involves growing the economy.  

As Fichte said, “you must fashion him [the student], and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will”.

Stop for a minute and think about what it would feel like if it was you living in an inner city slum that was created by our money policies.  Ask yourself how you would react if you had been forced into poverty by government policies that intentionally encourage a culture that, through its learned love of inequality, along with its inability to have empathy when faced with the existence of lesser-equals, doesn’t value you or see anything to respect in you.

Without enough money, thus unable to escape your environment, what would you do to survive?  What would you do to cope?  What would that do to your mental health?  What would that do to your children?  How would you feel as a parent?  How would you feel as a teen who sees no way to escape even with a high school education, let alone a now-unaffordable college education that no longer promises a job after graduation?  Where would you find the costly treatment for the violence-causing PTSD or CST (Chronic Stress Disorder) that almost all inner-city children and their parents have?

How can we know with certainty that this was done intentionally?

The Federal Highway Administration caused trillions of dollars to be invented into existence during President Johnson’s “War on poverty”, even though the actual war was on the impoverished according to the official Federal Highway Administration’s own website.   In its interstate highway development program that served as a subsidy for businesses, rather than run the new highways around cities, they ran them through black neighborhoods under the thought-cleansing name of “Urban Renewal”.  They also created a new trend of “white flight” as those who could afford it fled on lovely new roads to the newly developing suburbs, while Blacks and Hispanics, who have always had the least relative wages and highest unemployment, were left to fend for themselves after their businesses and homes were demolished.  The inner-city mantra “If you’re white, take flight.  If you’re brown, stick around.  If you’re black, stay back.” helped spark the Civil Rights movement in America that has made some, though not enough improvement.

Poverty serves the money masters well.  It causes us to fear it and recoil from it�"to blame its victims for its existence�"unable to comprehend that it is pretend money, with no more inherent value than Monopoly money, that literally and knowingly invents poverty into existence.

From your government’s point of view, freedom from fear of poverty or anything else your government wants you to fear, is a freedom that must never be allowed.  The government’s unconstitutional existence depends on it.

Without poverty, there would be no money economy.  With no money economy, there would be no social inequality.  With no social inequality, there can be no aristocrats who are served by the government that sold to you into serfdom while telling you about a protective and comforting Big Brother (or Uncle, in the case of the United States) that is carefully guarding the freedoms they took from you for your own benefit.   

In a culture of equals, competition for pieces of nothing goes away.  Cooperation replaces competition.   Competition inspires fear.  Cooperation inspires love and creativity.

If we were reading a book of fiction about a culture that established a class system that places those with less nothing beneath those with more nothing, and leaves people hungry because of insufficient nothing, our minds would be twisted into a pretzel.  It appears that they already have been.

 Chapter 16 J
Musical Money:
America needs its enemies


What the main drift of the twentieth century has revealed is that the economy has become concentrated and incorporated in the great hierarchies, the military has become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the entire economic structure; and moreover the economic and the military have become structurally and deeply interrelated, as the economy has become a seemingly permanent war economy; and military men and policies have increasingly penetrated the corporate economy.  �" C. Wright Mills



The most effective way to grow the economy is to invest heavily in war.  It makes little difference who or what we are warring against.  It’s rather like Fichte’s insistence that schools should “maintain a high standard of severity, and should prohibit the doing of many things.”  It doesn’t matter what is prohibited.  It only matters that many things are prohibited.  When it comes to the economy, it doesn’t matter who or what the enemy is.  It only matters that there are many of them.  The economy MUST grow.  

We are often sold reasons to go to war, and those reasons may have no basis in reality.  When George W. Bush pushed for war in Iraq, saying it was a nuclear threat because aluminum tubes and evidence of its having yellowcake had been found, it took less than twenty minutes on the Internet to ascertain that the referenced tubes could not be used to make nuclear bombs.  It was a lie.  So were the “leaked” counterfeit documents about yellowcake.  So were the “leaked” stories to the New York Times that were then referenced on Sunday News shows by the leaker of the lies, Vice President Cheney, who then used his own leaked lies as further evidence of why we should go to war .  So were the threats of a mushroom cloud.  These tactics are part of the “Top Secret” program known as Black PSYOPS that is regularly used against Americans. For more (documented) information please see the Appendix  “Black PSYOPS” at the end of this book.

These were such scary lies that too many wanted to go to war.  Fear allows us to be easily manipulated into wanting war�"allegedly for our own protection.  Our Patriotism Response kicked in.  But there was a money factor involved in the lies in addition to a lust for another country’s oil�"explaining why his foreign policy team headed to Iraq while reading The Marshall Plan that was wholly inappropriate for such a small targeted war in a single small country.

America needs enemies because America needs to keep its economy growing.  The enemy could be in the Middle East.  It could be drugs.  It could be a political philosophy.  It could be hunger, which is always good for raising the price of food. It could be anything or any group.  When the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union's last Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, said, "I will do something very terrible to you, America�"I am going to take away your enemy."   Perhaps most people did not understand the very real threat in Gorbachev's remark, but it is time that we do. If we were to declare peace today, our economy would crumble overnight.

Our economy is war-based because nothing else will demand enough loans to grow the anti-economy by putting enough anti-money into circulation to create the anti-money that is required to pay the interest plus principal on the debt-funded money that is really nothing.

But at what cost, war?  We harm ourselves and others in the process.  We also endanger ourselves because wars create enemies.  By all accounts, our nation is less safe since 9/11 because of our military involvement.  But wars are essential to keep the economy growing.
 
Wars have disastrous effects on the mental health, physical well-being, and the social fabric of the civilian populations.  To quote those who have lived through one, “War is Hell”.  Many civilians who found themselves in war zones suffer from severe mental disorders, PTSD being the most frequent.  Wars create mental illnesses that create terrorists.  All non-combatants, including children, are harmed in military assaults even if they are not missing body parts or parents.  Societies and families are torn apart in wars.

“PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that people with PTSD often may develop additional disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person’s ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting.”

It is not just civilians who suffer devastating consequences of war.  Those fighting in the wars have their own debilitating burdens to bear.  Apparently, the evidence shows, soldiers don’t like killing people or watching people be killed and maimed or watching families and comrades being destroyed by bombs that thrust body parts into the streets.  Witnessing death and destruction does very real damage to the human mind.  War isn’t good for humans, no matter who is holding the weapon.  It isn’t good for the earth.  During Europe’s Thirty Years War, both sides burned fields and forests throughout Europe in order to deprive the enemy of resources.  Wars are not good for nature either.

Do we really need someone to tell us that war is bad?  Apparently so.   Too many Americans, terrified by hyped-up images of a dangerous enemy, are all too eager to agree to more military operations on foreign soil.  We are simply outsourcing the devastation that is being inflicted in our name as we create more enemies who want to kill us.  The economy MUST grow and war helps the economy grow more than any other single cause.  Fear can cause an otherwise loving people to want to kill and maim whatever enemy we are encouraged to hate.

As you saw in the appendix to Chapter 9, both World War I and World War II began as an economic wars started by bankers.  The War of 1812 may have  been part of an economic war when, in 1811, the U. S. failed to renew the charter for the Bank of the United States, that made so many wealthy Europeans more wealthy than they already were.  The War of Independence was nothing more than an economic war.  The unending wars in Europe were economic wars at their core.  The wars against the indigenous people were economic wars.  The Napoleonic wars, where the aristocrats that owned banks sent countries to war against the egalitarian principles of the enlightenment, were brought about by our banking system.

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.  Such is the logic of patriotism.  �" Emma Goldman

But wars don’t need to be against other countries.  As you saw in AmericansWar on Poverty that was really a war on the impoverished, wars can be against ideas or groups of people, even if those people are the most vulnerable America citizens.    It’s all about profits.  The quest for money drives everything.

When anything and everything must be capitalized upon for profits, that includes ideas.  If you are a capitalist, that may make perfect sense to you, but if you are a human who is paying attention, it starts to make less and less sense.  

Let’s say that a person or company can teach you things that can improve your life and make you and your family healthier and safer.  Let’s say that if you study under the tutelage of a company that gives you a beautiful parchment that states that you are sufficiently “educated” to qualify for a good job, you can use it to have a better life.  If you can’t afford to buy that piece of parchment that validates the education it says you have, you are out of luck.  Even if you spend ten times the number of years educating yourself in many, many fields, learning about those fields of knowledge in depth, and you are better educated than anyone you know, if you haven’t purchased educational legitimacy, you are considered uneducated.  Your future is far darker than someone who has taken on great debt to purchase that piece of parchment that trains you for a job rather than educates you.  Expensive schooling is good for the economy.  They are wars against the poor people that could be helped by them which would help humanity, but: The economy MUST grow.

“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal �" that there is no human relation between master and slave.”
Leo Tolstoy

What if someone knows about a lethal danger that you or your children are guaranteed to face, but you cannot learn of the danger unless you first pay money?  Does it make as much sense now?  

If someone can save your life by warning about and sharing a solution to a danger, such as through the writing of a book, is it ethical to withhold that information unless you first pay the author money?  In other words, if I see you drowning, and I am nearby in a boat with a life ring that will save you, but I won’t help unless someone first pays me money, what then?  You can buy the life ring, or lease it, but pulling you into my boat will cost you more.  Is that ethical?  Corporate persons say it’s necessary .  Government says it’s moral .  Do you, a human being, think it’s ethical?  

It makes no difference whether you agree or not.  The economy MUST grow, and you have been indoctrinated to believe that your survival, rather than your misery or even death, depends on it.  America is at war against its own citizens today.  The War on Poverty (the impoverished) never ended.

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life �" it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion.  �"  Albert Schweitzer





 Chapter 6K
Musical Money
Ethics Gone Wrong


An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop
or the concentration camp and the death march.
Simon Blackburn


What we are blindly doing to others in support of the unethical fiscal paradigm that we support is unconscionable.  It should bring us pause.  Why doesn’t it?

Take our love of diamonds for example.  “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”, or so we have been told.  But at what cost �" diamonds?

The atrocities associated with our love of them are almost unthinkable.  Armies have forced tens of thousands of people to mine diamonds in brutal, dangerous conditions under the threat of death, with their pay as paltry as a cup of rice per day.  Sierra Leone helped finance its Civil war with diamonds.  Thugs indiscriminately chopped off innocent people’s hands, arms, and feet using dirty axes, in order to convince whole villages to not-do business with a competitor, or to convince them to become slaves in the mines.  Zimbabwean diamonds still come to you with human rights violations including torture, forced labor, child labor, sexual violence, and murder. They are also helping to keep a brutal dictator in power.  Our love of diamonds is responsible for all of that.  The suffering is at the hands of those wearing the diamonds.

The same can be said for what we support in order to get or hands on much of our highly treasured technology.   Rape, torture, slavery, neo-slavery , inhumane working and living conditions accompany our love of computers, smart phones, and video games. US journalist Sara Turner, who won a Pulitzer award after writing about child labor, reported: "I wonder how many times someone looks at their laptop or their cell phone [or video game] and thinks, 'there is coltan mined by children in this product'. These [African] children die because of disease, starvation and unsafe working conditions. They die because the military abuse and murder them to hush their [own] crimes."    

In China where African colton is shipped to make our technology, neo-slavery is the norm. The report by the National Labor Committee asserts that 16 and 17 year olds were working 15-hour shifts in crowded conditions (1,000 workers in a 105’ X 105’ space) without air-conditioning unless inspectors are known to be coming that day.  These workers are a typical example of what is happening throughout the tech industry, no matter the brand.  In one Chinese factory that makes Microsoft’s computer mice and controllers for the XBox, workers are paid 59 cents a day for those long shifts, while Bill Gates’ net worth increased by 15 billion in 2014 alone.  As of April 2014, his net worth was over 80 billion.    

The cocoa industry has a century-long history of forced and child labor. “More than 70% of the world’s supply of cocoa comes from two countries nestled on the southern shore of West Africa: Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. There, whole communities are dedicated to growing the crop that is lucrative for governments and international traders, but brings below-poverty wages for the farmers who produce it. Low wages mean farmers cannot hire the labor needed to harvest the crop, and perpetuates child trafficking and worst forms of child labor that have plagued the industry. Children are exposed to chemicals, long working hours, and the denial of a decent education.”   

Uzbekistan is one of the largest exporters of cotton in the world. For decades, the government of Uzbekistan has forced adults and children as young as 10 to pick cotton under appalling conditions each harvest season.  The Uzbek government enforces this forced labor with threats, detentions and tortures.

The rest of the garment industry is no better.  Underpaid workers are often locked in sweat shops, and prevented from leaving even when they smell smoke, thus burning to death in all-too-frequent fires.  Some buildings have so many people in them that they collapse from the weight.  To extricate them from the collapsed buildings, limbs are often amputated at the scene.  These workers then are no longer employable and there is no social safety net to protect them.  “Bangladesh is the poster child for the failures of corporate-controlled social auditing (Multinational corporations allegedly investigating themselves). Bangladeshi garment workers are the lowest paid of any garment workers in the world, earning a minimum wage which, after an increase announced two months ago, is no more than US $68 per month.  Low wages are compounded by the near absence of a social safety net and the minimal compensation for a worker who dies or is injured at work. Building and fire safety standards in the factories are notoriously poor, resulting in preventable worker deaths and injuries with alarming regularity. And workers’ efforts to organize for better conditions and higher wages are often violently repressed by police, security forces, and hired thugs.”

“Palm oil is a commodity most of us know little about, yet is virtually ubiquitous in our daily consumption.  It is a key ingredient of a host of store staples like cosmetics, soaps and snack foods.  The palm oil industry-- led by household brand names such as Unilever, Kraft, IKEA and McDonalds-- has known that these human rights violations existed for years. This omnipresent vegetable oil is harvested on plantations mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia by workers who remain hidden from the public eye. Many of them are children who work in unsafe conditions for far below the minimum wage. Others have been deceived by labor brokers into being caught in debt-bondage like situations, and are trapped in remote areas with no ability to pay for a passage home.”

In Viet Nam, addicts are forced into detention centers without a trial.  There, they are “forced to work under harsh conditions for little or no pay doing a range of repetitive tasks, like sewing t-shirts or mosquito bed nets, painting stone trinkets, and processing cashews, often for private companies.  As punishment for refusing to work, violating center rules, or simply not filling a daily quota, detainees report being beaten with wooden truncheons, shocked with electrical batons, or placed in solitary confinement.   These repetitive tasks often cause carpal tunnel that leaves workers disabled.  Vietnam’s use of forced labor as drug treatment does not work to end addiction, and it violates international law, including ILO Convention 29, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet we buy these products that appear in the American markets.”

The tobacco industry is no exception:  “For over 100 years cigarette manufacturers and leaf buying companies have exploited farmers to obtain profits from below-cost leaf, unpaid child labor and low-cost and bonded adult laborers. … Tobacco is an input-intensive crop, requiring seeds, seedbeds, fertilizer and pesticide applications, and access to credit to cover such input costs. Tobacco companies take advantage of this credit opportunity by selling agricultural chemicals and other inputs at above-market rates on loan. The companies, through loan arrangements, trap farmers into a cycle of debt.”  This is what was outlawed in America when miners were forced to buy from the company store or lose their lives and/or their family’s livelihood.   

Saffron, that sells for $85.00 an ounce and Vanilla, ($6.00 an ounce) also have human suffering attached. “These crops take an intense amount of time and large number of manual laborers to grow, plus they grow best along the equator. So the incentive is very much to find the countries where both land and labor are cheapest, and often where rule of law is least established.”

Today, it is almost impossible to buy something that isn’t supporting outrageous human rights abuses.  Even if you go to the central market in Charleston, South Carolina to buy a basket you see being made from local grasses by a real person, or go to a Native American arts store in Parawan, Utah to buy a native-made blanket or rug, you will not be able to buy anything without the assistance of barbaric treatment of human beings.  As soon as the basket weaver answers her cell phone, or the shopkeeper uses a computer to manage his books, or either of them get dressed in the morning, your purchase pays for man’s inhumanity to man, brought to you by the love of inequality in support of money that is really nothing.

How can taxpayer subsidized churches, ministers, and religious organizations remain silent in the face of all the real persecution of the most vulnerable?  We are no better than the Conquistadors.  Why are American churches more concerned with what we do with our bodies or who we marry than the fact that we are paying for unending cruelty inflicted on real, already born human beings?

In America, if crimes in the form of human rights abuses are outsourced by multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires under the protection of pieces of paper called corporate charters that have more rights and are provided more protections than people even though they can’t even pay taxes, it is suddenly legal.  Not only is it legal.  It’s moral!  It’s more than moral!  It’s mandatory!

If you hire thugs to abuse people through slavery, torture, rape, murder, starvation, and more, you will be a wanted criminal.  If a corporate person does the same, or its board of directors knowingly causes the same to happen, all is well, whether in this country’s prisons or in poor third world nations.  As long as it is done against the most vulnerable, it’s fine.

Let’s follow that thought.  How is it possible that corporations can protect human beings from guilt?  

Someone wants to win the game of “Who on earth can gather the most nothing before s/he dies”.  That person creates a corporation by typing some words on a piece of paper.  The process is the same as inventing money into existence.  A corporation needs a federal ID number that is a piece of paper’s equivalent of a birth certificate.

As we have already seen, as soon as that is done, the piece of paper is elevated in status from paper with writing on it to an invisible person by the decree of the Supreme Court.  Because it has no voice box, the Supreme Court has also declared that money is its voice.  Money is the voice that employs the thugs who use whips, chains, rapists, guns, torturers, and axes (etc.) to do the paper person’s bidding.  These thugs force even the youngest of children to endure barbaric treatment and even cruel death so that the paper person can make more nothing.  

Because the court has also decreed that certain of those pieces of paper have consciences and have religious rights that are protected by the First Amendment, if the paper is not bothered by its inhumanity to man, why should the paper’s owners be bothered?  If those two groups of persons are not bothered, why should the banker who funds them be bothered? If government is able to pay its debts only because of them, then of course, it’s fine and dandy.  And if government can save some money by doing the same thing using our tax dollars, so much the better.  

Banks do not have an obligation to promote the public good.
Alexander Dielius, CEO Germany, Austria, Eastern Europe Goldman Sachs

If the owner of a paper person does such things under the protection of the piece of paper that was created into existence by the owner of that paper, and magically imbued with personhood, then it is perfectly legal and moral.   If you were to treat others as others are being treated in our names, you would be considered a sociopath and would spend the rest of your days in jail.  If we buy these products, we are paying for the abuses, and if we continue to buy them, we are sociopaths.  

If the American taxpayer, were to pay for similar atrocities being done in America, it would be illegal.  Or would it?

“I am just a banker doing God’s work".
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs





 
Chapter 16 L
Musical Money
The Anti-Golden Rule
America’s new slave trade



In a cartoon... King: "REMEMBER THE GOLDEN RULE!" Peasant: "WHAT’S THAT?" Another peasant: "WHOEVER HAS THE GOLD, MAKES THE RULES!"
Wizard of Id



Human rights violations are not just being outsourced to third world countries.  The U. S. for-profit prison system also uses the equivalent of slave labor. Human rights organizations are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where a prison population of mostly Blacks and Hispanics, are working for various industries for anything from no wages to neo-slave wages.

“For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, [health insurance], vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

“…According to California Prison Focus, ‘no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.’  The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S.   Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, [while the US  compromises only] 5% of the world’s people.” …

“The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. ‘This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors.

“… According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture; airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.”   

“Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. … With no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding [prisoners] also make complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder. Prisoners recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles.

“Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons.  UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.”

We hear a lot about the loss of manufacturing jobs, but they aren’t all lost.  Even jobs once created by our government’s needs or wants have been quietly outsourced as well as “insourced” to American prisons.  For manufacturers, though not taxpayers, prisoners are cheaper than automation.  They provide slave labor and their products don’t require overseas shipping.  It does these things at the expense of the now-closed small American’s businesses that were once America’s foundation.  Those businesses were replaced by UNICOR.  Small businesses are expendable, yet small businesses are absolutely essential to keeping the economy afloat.

Texas first started experimenting with for-profit prisons in 1871. Inhumane treatment, corruption, and mismanagement caused the state to end its for-profit prison system only six years later.  But now it’s back with a vengeance, and so are the very same problems.  The ACLU of Texas reports:

 For-profit facilities are often more dangerous and have worse conditions than state-run facilities.
 They are found to have 50% more inmate-on-staff assaults and 66% more inmate-on-inmate assaults.
 Community advocates and researchers have documented a long list of abuses in for-profit facilities across Texas, including financial mismanagement, assaults against inmates, inmates driven to suicide by poor living conditions, and mental health and medical complaints left untreated.

…“For-profit prisons are exempt from many open government laws that apply to state-run facilities and do not have the same reporting requirements as state-run facilities.  As a result, it is more difficult for a community to learn about what is happening inside private prisons, including abuse, unsanitary conditions, and misuse of tax dollars.

“Over-Incarceration:

 The for-profit prison industry needs to increase prison populations to make more money for shareholders. As a result, the for-profit prison industry spends millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers for longer-sentencing and enhanced criminal penalties, policies that we know are costly and ineffective.
 The for-profit model demands that prison beds stay filled, even if it is at the expense of families, taxpayers, and communities.

… “The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit. For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon.

“The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and diplomats pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the world into multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further corporate profits, often leaving many countries mired in enormous debt.

“But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to drastically undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher profits to military corporations �" whose weapons wreak such havoc around the world �" is an ominous development.”

According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid “aerospace workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years. Like many other industries, the defense sector has been quietly outsourcing production (and jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.” (Feb. 24) It seems that with prison labor, these jobs are also being outsourced domestically”. (Called insourcing)

“The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat and coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals.”

“More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color  (Even though they represent only 13% of our population ). Seventy percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California �" which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions (even if for the non-violent crime of possessing a few grams of marijuana) �" are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington, “Incarceration Nation”)”

One in six black males have been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime

When it comes to who fills our prisons, race matters.  The first chart below is marijuana use by skin color.  The second is arrests for marijuana possession.

     

Marijuana is not physically addictive.  Violence associated with it comes from the black markets rather than the users.  Marijuana makes people passive.  Still, we put them in prisons because non-violent criminals make the safest slaves.

Powder cocaine and crack cocaine are different forms of the same drug.  Crack cocaine is cheaper, thus more popular with blacks who are poorer than whites who are richer, so the sentences for crack cocaine are harsher than for powder cocaine.  There is also an inverse relationship when it comes to arrests.

     


“African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison
for a non-violent drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent
offense (61.7 months).”

“2.7 million children are growing up in U.S. households in which one or more parents are incarcerated. Two-thirds of these parents are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, primarily drug offenses. One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 28 Latino children and one in 57 white children.”

One in every 100 adults are in prison today,
up from 1 in every 500,000 in 1980.    

Having a parent in jail or prison increases the likelihood of children experiencing a range of risks, including internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, truancy, substance abuse, school failure, and adult criminal behavior.   That is what PTSD does to people.  These children are being damaged.

“35% of black children grades 7-12 have been suspended or expelled at some point in their school careers compared to 20% of Hispanics and 15% of whites”

One in 31 U.S. Adults are presently
behind bars, on parole or on probation.  

“If you have insurance, invest, use utilities, have a bank, drive a car, send a child to school, go to a dentist, call service centers, fly on planes, take prescription drugs, or use paper, you might be benefiting from prison labor.

“If you’ve bought products by or from Starbucks, Nintendo, Victoria’s Secret, JC Penney, Sears, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Eddie Bauer, Wendy’s, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Fruit of the Loom, Motorola, Caterpiller, Sara Lee, Quaker Oats, Mary Kay, or Microsoft, you are part of this system.

Granted, the written Constitution did authorize slavery when it is punishment for a crime.  This has traditionally been understood to mean that prisoners can be required to grow the prison’s food, cook prisoner meals, clean the prisons and yards, do the laundry and dishes, and make the uniforms.  This reduces the cost of their imprisonment.  When in a state prison, prison labor has long been used to make license plates.  Some local and county jails use prisoners to pick up litter along the highways.   That is far, FAR different from a prison industry that benefits from lobbying for inventing nonviolent crime into existence along with lobbied-for benefits of longer sentences for persons of color who commit non-violent crimes    so that government and private for-profit companies can legally benefit from slave labor right here in the USA.

When laws are created to provide slave labor, the U.S. taxpayer is paying for the slavery as well as all of the collateral damage it causes.  Taxpayers are paying for the prisoners’ room, board, clothing, health care, and security.  We are paying for the lobbying efforts to get more laws that will imprison more non-violent offenders for longer periods of time.  We are often paying for care of now-parentless and impoverished dependent children and the damage that this has done to them�"and they will do to us and themselves when they become damaged adults, as they will.   We are paying for the fact that we are making children’s parents’ unemployable because of a criminal record.  We are paying for the poverty that we are creating.  We are paying for and causing the suffering and violence in poor urban areas.  Taxpayers are also paying for the inflated prices of products sold to the Pentagon by its favorite private, for-profit corporations that base the price of products on the going price in a global marketplace, ignoring the savings that come to them from neo-slave labor.

We are the taxpayers.  We are paying for all of this.  But we are also individuals.  The mirror is being held before us all.  Can we deny that we are supporting slavery, racism, and unimaginable human rights violations when we pay for slavery, racism, and unimaginable human rights violations, be it through our taxes or our spending habits?  If we want a nation of, by, and for the people, we cannot allow incomprehensible human rights violations to take place�"be it by us as consumers or us as taxpayers.  A government of, by, and for the people does not support atrocities even if it means that we cannot have the latest smart phone or tablet. That is how we protect ourselves from atrocities.  When exactly did the Golden Rule become the anti-Golden Rule?

What has happened to the country’s largest religion that is supposed to stand for loving one’s neighbors, loving one’s enemies, treating others as we want to be treated, and as Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?  Dare one suggest that here in the anti-world, Christianity worships the anti-Christ?  

The biggest problem with America’s prisons is that they are founded on the false assumption of the validity of punishment as a motivator (carrot and stick), even though that violates a known LAW of behavior that says: negative reinforcement (punishment) is NOT a positive behavior modifier.
 
16 M
Musical Money
Black Markets
Yes, they’re profitable, but …


I was one of those who was very happy when the original prohibition amendment passed. I thought innocently that a law in this country would automatically be complied with, and my own observation led me to feel rather ardently that the less strong liquor anyone consumed the better it was. During prohibition I observed the law meticulously, but I came gradually to see that laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law.
Eleanor Roosevelt


Think about what happens when we create the black markets that have caused our prison population to grow to such extremes.  Just as money is invented into existence, so too is crime, whether violent or non-violent.   When you take a plant that grows naturally in the wild, for which the brain has evolved specific receptors that makes people non-violent and feel loved, and you make it illegal, you invent a black market into existence.

As seen in the last chapter a vast majority of our prison population is for non-violent drug-related offenses caused by the creation of a black market.  

Even so, black markets are renowned for their violence, and the black markets created by our “War on Drugs” (that is really a war on drug users) are no different.  By supporting the laws that knowingly and intentionally create the black markets we are then required to pay taxes to fight against, can we call ourselves a sane people?  We taxpayers support the atrocities that are being done in our name because of them.  

Black markets are created by governments because they ban certain substances on one end, but then reap rewards of economic growth on the other end.

Take marijuana as an example.  The corruption in making that illegal is another good example of how we are manipulated into demanding something that we don’t really want.

In the 1930s, Congress agreed that “The fatal marihuana cigarette must be recognized as a deadly drug, and American children must be protected against it.”   Of course, many studies disprove that claim and the American Medical Association (AMA) has always rejected the idea and testified to Congress accordingly.   And of course, the Constitution doesn’t allow it.

But the history of making marijuana illegal has nothing to do with its alleged and non-existent lethality.  It had to do with a lust for power.   And it had another, far more sinister, raison d’être.  The story of both are well documented.

In 1930, a firebrand, Harry J. Anslinger, was named the head of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).  It was his bureau’s job to enforce prohibition after the Prohibition Division was brought down by scandals when a grand jury saw collusion between federal narcotics agents and drug distributors.  Anslinger’s greatest frustration at the time was that users could not be arrested, jailed, and fined.  That was for the producers and bootleggers.  He was eager to make a name for himself.  His methods were Hamiltonian.

In 1932, Anslinger went on the record saying that the occasional worry about the growth of marijuana use was over-exaggerated.  But then, prohibition ended, and his new department took a $200,000 budget cut (the equivalent of nearly 3 billion today) and agents were being withdrawn from his department.  Anslinger was worried that his bureau would be phased out.

To maintain his position of power, Anslinger had to prove that there was a new drug menace threatening the country, one that required immediate federal attention, one that the Bureau of Narcotics could deal with if only its hands were not tied. To prove the reality of the menace, Anslinger was prepared to spare no effort.

A great believer in the force of public opinion, Anslinger reverted to the type of media campaign that had proven so successful when the Narcotics Division sought to expand in 1915.  He began to supply false information to organizations like the WCTU , community service clubs, and the press concerning alleged atrocities committed by people under the influence of marihuana.

He also went around the country talking before any group that would have him, telling horrible (and impossible) tales of how even one puff of a marijuana cigarette is enough to turn someone’s innocent child into an ax murderer, and WORSE!   He told lies about children who murdered their parents and siblings, then had no memory of doing so because they had smoked a single marijuana cigarette.  Most of his arguments were racist.  He said:

“…most [users] are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”

“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”

“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men. ”

“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

“One [marijuana] cigarette might develop a homicidal maniac, probably to kill his brother.”

Marijuana is an additive drug, which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.

When writing about the largely unheard of drug that had gained some popularity among Hispanics and blacks, he told stories that those who have since searched newspaper archives to verify the stories, now know were nothing more than lies.  Anslinger wrote an article in American Magazine that was later published in condensed form by Readers Digest, then America’s favorite periodical.  It was filled with invented but terrifying stories of bloody violence, senseless suicide, and the degeneration of America’s youth, all linked to marijuana, that he called the assassin’s drug.

Evoking images of devil possession, he wrote of improvisational jazz (the black man’s music that was making its way into white culture),  “While under the influence of marijuana, he does not realize that he is tapping the keys, with a furious speed impossible for one in a normal state of mind; marijuana has stretched out the time of the music until a dozen notes may be crowded into the space normally occupied by one.”

Major newspapers, such as the Hearst papers that had its own agenda (because hemp threatened his paper-making industry), sensationalized the non-problem that was to become a sudden public enemy number one.  Hearst papers published things like: “Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows, and look at a white woman twice.”   Newsweek reported: "A California man capitated his best friend while under the violent spell of the smoke!"   The Christian Century reported: "In some districts inhabited by Latin Americans, Filipinos, Spaniards and Negroes, half the crimes are attributed to the marijuana craze!" , and an article in the Scientific American read, “The drug is adhering to its old word traditions of murder, assault, rape, physical demoralization, and mental breakdown!”   America was experiencing an intentionally induced madness craze caused by one racist man’s ambition.  None of it was true.

Yellow journalism was frequently used to tie any and every crime to the dastardly marijuana plant, the more bloody and monstrous the crime the better, even if the link was an unsupported sentiment saying that for a crime to be so heinous, the criminal had to have been smoking a marijuana cigarette.  Again, published in the Hearst newspapers:  “Was it marijuana, the new Mexican drug, that nerved the murderous arm of Clara Phillips when she hammered out her victim’s life in Los Angeles?"   

In this way of dishonestly stoking flames of irrational fear and hate of Blacks and Hispanics, marijuana was falsely linked to violence, insanity, disintegration of society, and even demon possession.  As parents heard about the dangers to their children from highly respected sources, their fears grew, so the willingness to outlaw it grew, even though the reasons are now known to be lies, and even though the damage this caused is more real than most want to see.  Anslinger never relented.  As we entered the McCarthy era, he shifted and tied the drug to the Cold War, saying that marijuana use leads to communist brainwashing and the threat of pacifism.

What did marijuana prohibition buy us?  Americans need look no further than the thirteen-year reign of alcohol prohibition and compare it to the growing violence along the Mexican borders and in our inner cities and growing prison populations, as well as intentionally outsourced violence in Mexico and South America, not to mention our growing prison population.

It took little time for the alcohol prohibitionists to see how much violence prohibition brought.  Great empires were built by people such as Al Capone�"the 1920s equivalent of today’s street gangs.  The ensuing violence posed a far greater threat to the population than some neighbor neglecting his or her Christian duty, which is why alcohol prohibition was repealed.   

We appear not to have learned an important lesson.  There is a valid reason for that.  Our government is outsourcing the violence so that we won’t see so much of it.   And we are forcing part of the cost of policing that violence to the poorest nations.  We may not see the violence, but it’s still there.  It may not initially make sense that if we need to fight the War on Drugs to grow the economy, that we would outsource the violence, but it does if you look deeper.

The opening statement of the “Report of the LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy” reads:  “The pursuit of a militarized and enforcement-led global ‘war on drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage. These include mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilization in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world. …  Much of the recent child migrant crisis is a direct result of children fleeing cartel violence and conscription into criminal gangs.  When drug prices are high, production increases. By keeping demand for cannabis and cocaine high, but supply low, the US forced third world countries to establish economies based on the drug trade.”  

Outsourcing the violence that our own country creates by using the power and might of the United States and other wealthy nations, using the UN to pressure other countries to do our own dirty work for us is also part of a very dark and malevolent purpose for keeping marijuana illegal in the USA.

Defaming, Blacks, Hispanics, and Communists weren’t Anslinger’s only concern.  He saw an even graver underlying threat when it came to marijuana.  He saw the opposite of murder and mayhem that was so dangerous, it had to be stopped:

As he said while contemplating the red threat: Marihuana leads to pacifism …

That one thing, pacifism, makes marijuana an entirely different kind of threat to our money system than any other threat in our history.  Because that threat is so great, government has a vested interest in lying to us to keep it illegal.  It lies to us in many ways.  

One way of lying is instituting drug laws that force pot smokers, including children, to buy from black market drug dealers rather than liquor stores that would check  ID and refuse to sell to children.  Meanwhile, our government is telling us something that all of its own many studies invalidate.  It tells us that pot is a gateway drug.  But as people who want it are forced to buy it from black-market dealers who don’t check IDs, and who also sell other more profitable addictive drugs, that’s an obvious lie even if the government’s own research hadn’t said so.   Another way of lying is by saying that it is more dangerous than opium.  What’s going on?  

Many people may be surprised to learn that in spite of outlawing the plant, marijuana is America's largest cash crop, an estimated $36 billion-a-year mostly tax-free industry, making it larger than corn and wheat combined.  They may also be surprised to learn that there is growing discussion among leaders of South American countries about legalizing drugs, especially marijuana, in order to send the bloody violence back where it rightfully belongs�"in the one country that buys the most and is causing their problems.  If they do that, there will be no hiding from the violence on our streets, until it is decriminalized.  There is no way that your government would willingly allow that to happen.  It would pose a grave threat to our government.  The violence would cause people to demand an end to marijuana prohibition, just as they did with alcohol prohibition.  But marijuana prohibition is different.  As Anslinger apparently foresaw, serves a two-fold purpose.

The first and most obvious reason to keep marijuana illegal is that it grows the economy.  It is the second reason that is more nefarious.

The need to keep you unaware of what you are doing to yourself and your neighbors, and what is being done TO you, is the second AND MOST IMPORTANT reason for making marijuana a Schedule I drug in 1970.  To be a Schedule I drug, it has to be more dangerous than Opium, cocaine, methamphetamine, hydromorphone (Dilaudid), meperidine (Demerol), and oxycodone (OxyContin) plus many more highly addictive drugs.  Why was marijuana conflated with dangerous drugs when even the AMA and the government’s own studies said that is untrue and the move unjustified?

The reason is obvious.  It was 1970.  We were engaged in the Viet Nam conflict�"an undeclared war.  Many of those who smoked pot refused to fight.   They became, as Anslinger had warned, the dreaded “Pacifists!”

The military was not voluntary and the draft was extremely unpopular.  Those who were well connected and could afford it found ways to avoid serving in the conflict.  Initially, there were many types of deferments.  If you were married, if you were in college, if you had children, etc.  These deferments were gradually removed and replaced by a lottery system.  If you were wealthy and you had a low number, you could use your parent’s connections to get into the Coast Guard or National Guard that didn’t go overseas.  This meant that the impact was almost entirely restricted to the poor and middle classes, with a disproportionately high percentage of blacks being drafted because they couldn’t afford to qualify for deferments or cush military assignbments.  A growing movement of draft and war resistance shed light on what America was doing in Southeast Asia as it simultaneously found a way to reduce the black population in America’s still racially divided south and urban areas.   

The pictures of America burning children alive using napalm dropped from the air was more than many could bear.  America was sending its youth into a slaughter in spite of the fact that (we now know and most then either knew or suspected) the leaders knew that the war was unwinnable. The deaths of millions, including 56,000 Americans, were senseless.  

Many young soldiers began self-medicating because of the now-known affects of being in a war zone.  They brought marijuana (and more serious drugs) home with them, sharing with family and friends.  Thai sticks and other forms of pot became popular and the market established itself.  (Another example of how consumer demand creates business, and tax cuts for the wealthy don’t.)  

With minds opening, and new possibilities for living more sanely being talked about, and with experimental alternative communities called communes starting up, Hippies began telling their peers  “Make Love, not war” and “Tune in.  Turn on.  Drop out.”   America’s young became a threat to war itself, thus the core of our economic paradigm�"our whole system of money was again in danger.

During the undeclared war,  “A total of 170,000 men received C.O. (conscientious objector) deferments; as many as 300,000 other applicants were denied deferment .  Nearly 600,000 illegally evaded the draft; about 200,000 were formally accused of draft offenses. Between 30,000 and 50,000 fled to Canada; another 20,000 fled to other countries or lived underground in America.”    

Marijuana was dangerous, all right, but not in the same way that the other drugs were, and not for the reasons we were given.  It was a danger to the military industrial complex, and that made it a threat to the banking elites who own our government that sold us into serfdom to establish our fractional reserve banking system that has brought us to the brink of extinction of life on earth.

The government moved to silence those who dared speak truth to the American people.  On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen opened fire on protesting college students at Kent State in Ohio, killing four and wounding nine. Taking their cue from the guardsmen, ten days later at Jackson State University, an all-black school in Mississippi, police and state highway patrolmen fired automatic weapons into a dormitory, killing two students and wounding nine others.  There is little doubt why such things never occurred at America’s Ivy League schools.

Marijuana use can allow a person to escape the programming and indoctrination (the American delusion) that has been forced upon us through mandatory public education.  It can also fire up the empathy neurons that our schooling has systematically caused to be shut down.

There are three types of marijuana available in America:  Indica, Stavia and for specialty markets, hybrids of the two.  Indica is originally from Afghanistan, Morocco, and Tibet.  This strain causes a strong body sensation.  It makes one tired, lazy, uninterested in doing anything, and is favored for pain relief.  

The Stavia strand originally came from Viet Nam and the rest of Southeast Asia as well as Columbia, and Mexico.  It was the Stavia strand that became popular in the 60s and 70s and brought the biggest threat to the government.  

Stavia is mind-opening. This type of high is the one most associated with fits of laughter and discussions that may or may not be life-altering or even mean anything to anyone watching.  It brings about enhanced senses. The user sees things in movies they’ve watched a dozen times but never noticed before.  They can sit with others and solve the problems of the world (or sometimes only think that they are solving them).  It’s a very uplifting sensation that leaves one feeling very loved.   For those who have never felt loved before, this is an amazing experience.  Obviously when you are feeling loved, it’s impossible to want to pick up a weapon to kill another.

Stavia strips the lies from unvarnished truth.  It exposes what exists under the surface.  It brings up questions like, “Why exactly are we really doing in Viet Nam, because what they are telling us makes no sense” and “Why do we need money”?  Stavia is why a generation was exposed to the nature of the great beast that is devouring humanity.  Stavia is why large parts of an entire generation were talking about how to live without money, and experimental communities called communes grew up.  Stavia is why the American Department of Defense concluded that America lost the war in Viet Nam on the streets of America, and concluded the need to use black PSYOPs on Americans as well as enemies to prevent it from ever happening again.  Marijuana prohibition is part of that Black PSYOPS program.

That is how and why the pacifist’s drug became the most dangerous drug in existence., even more dangerous than opium.  It stops people from killing or harming others.  It makes them want to protect the earth that gives us so much of her bounty.  It makes its users want to be nice to one another.  It induces the experience of being loved so that one who is loved can love others in return.

Prohibition of marijuna helps keep us locked in mental prisons that prevent us from seeing a different way of being and seeing the way out of our common plight.  When the Hippies said, “Tune in.  Turn on.  Drop out”, they were referring to a way to go beyond the entrained fear and fear of fear that blinds so many of us to what we are doing to ourselves and others.

As they saw a better world beyond fear, the Hippies spoke of a sense of “waking up” or “coming alive” and even “finding the groove”.  They were able to see and talk about a new and better tomorrow, and many saw the obvious path to that beautiful tomorrow.  They accessed greater truths from within the mind they were just rediscovering, and the biggest truth was that love exists.  It can be experienced and shared.  What you put out, comes back.  Love is a power, in the most basic sense of the word “power”.   One of the more famous photographs from the era was a line of national guardsmen pointing guns at protesters who were inserting daisies into the barrels of the guns.

As Anslinger put it, “Still others found themselves discussing weighty problems of youth with remarkable clarity. As one youngster expressed it, he “could see through stone walls.”  What the young man was saying was not that he was possessed and held some demonic powers, as Anslinger wanted the reader to assume.  If the “youngster” existed at all, and that’s very doubtful, he was saying that that he could see through the wall of fear and all the lies that compose the compulsory schooling-induced mental prison that held him.  He could see outside of the wall of fear and it was beautiful.

Brotherly love is antithetical to our money system.  If we were to decide to love others as we would like to be loved, or treat others as we would like to be treated, we would need to discard money to do so.  War would come to an end and the economy would collapse.  We would be free.  Too many Hippies figured that out thanks to Stavia being brought home from draftees forced to go to Viet Nam, where they developed PTSD, then used the plant for self-medication.

Fear is the opposite of love. Fear (for our safety) is what keeps us asking for wars that don’t protect us while they put us in more danger.  Fear (of how to survive) is what causes a battered woman to cling to hope that will never be realized.   Fear (of poverty) keeps us asking for corporations to pay their fair share in taxes.  Fear (of trusting our neighbors), is what keeps us compliant and unwilling to even discuss how to survive without the “nothing” that money is. Fear is causing us to be blind to what we are doing to others and ourselves.  Fear of losing “nothing” has brought us to the doorstep of the 6th mass extinction of life on earth.  

Fear is what we learned to immerse ourselves in and numb ourselves to through our many years of mandatory public schooling where we were judged, shamed, criticized, ignored, and belittled in order to build tolerance.  Fear is actual brain damage that causes us to behave in ways we would not ordinarily behave.

Fear is the anti-world’s equivalent of love.

Freedom from fear is the greatest possible of all threats to the anti-world’s governments with their insane money system.  It is why marijuana and other non-addictive drugs are illegal, and is why any drug is illegal.  No sane person would want to use addictive drugs, though those coping with life in our insane culture, would certainly self-medicate.  That isn’t the addict’s fault.  It’s the culture’s fault.  Fear is necessary for the continued existence of an unconstitutional U. S. government that sold us out to the banking cartel in McCulloch v. Maryland.  

The rulers of the anti-world need anti-money to pay the interest that was never invented into existence, plus the principal that was invented, to pay the ever-growing debt that will one day exceed our ability to pay a single interest payment, even though money, that is actually nothing, is constituted by an illusion involuntarily foisted upon you by your own government that has a vested interested in keeping you ignorant AND ignorant of your degree of ignorance.  

We have become the people that George Orwell wrote about in “1984”.  We truly belief that:

 SLAVERY IS FREEDOM  
 WAR IS PEACE
 IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Those three lines from “1984” aren’t all the nonsensical blatherings that we believe.  We also believe:

 NOTHING IS SOMETHING
 ZERO CAN BE DIVIDED BY ANY NUMBER TO BECOME MONEY
 THE GOLDEN RULE MEANS UNENDING CRUELTY INFLICTED ON THE MOST VULNERABLE
 FREEDOM ISN’T FREE
 THE CONSTITUTION IS OUR GOVERNING DOCTRINE
 FEUDALISM IS DEMOCRACY
 FASCISM IS DEMOCRACY
 CORPORATE CHARTERS ARE PERSONS
 CORPORATIONS  CAN PAY TAXES
 MONEY IS THE BEST MOTIVATOR
 THE SUPREME COURT IS AN HONORABLE INSTITUTION
 YOU CAN TRUST GOVERNMENT
 NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT/PUNISHMENT IS A POSITIVE BEHAVIOR MODIFIER
 INJUSTICE IS BETTER THAN JUSTICE
 INEQUALITY IS BETTER THAN EQUALITY
 OURS IS A GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE.
 THE CARROT AND THE STICK MODEL IS GOOD FOR US

Your willingness to continue to believe these lies is keeping the system alive.  

Marijuana is a schedule I drug for a reason.  The strongest prisons are the ones we cannot see.  Marijuana opens the prison doors of the mind and exposes freedom for what it is.  Freedom is most certainly free, once you find it.
 

16 N
Musical Money
Grasping at straws
The third stage of grief�"the bargaining


Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.  �"  George Orwell



Most people think that if we could just pay off the national debt, we would all be better off and things would get better.  

That won’t work.

If the government tried to pay off all its debts tomorrow, it would be insolvent.  In fact, it already is.  The money it would need to pay the interest on its debt has never been turned into money.  It doesn’t exist.  Government cannot pay off its debt�"ever.  It could create some trillion dollar coins, but that would create dramatic and crippling inflation sufficient to destroy the nation through rioting of a now-hungry population.  It would be an attack on the stock market.  It could turn over its property (the USA) to the lenders, but if no one can afford to buy those properties, they won’t do the lenders any good.  When too few have too much, no money has value.  Besides, you need that home for your survival.  

Government could declare war on the banks, forcing them to forgive all debts, but doing that before the people have the tools they need to live without money would create uncontrolled violence until the same system is restored by the people’s own insistence.  Hamilton was probably right on that point.  From the point of view of the handful of wealthy aristocrats who devised the Federal Reserve banking system with its fractional reserve banking, that insists that one can divide zero by any number, thus violating the laws of math, and that doing so turns nothing into something that you were schooled into being foolish enough to believe is real, that’s the beauty of the plan.  That’s why it’s a con.

We have done something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. ... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected. �" Senator John Danforth (R�"MO)

When the one-thenth of one percent holds all the cards, they get to tell government what to do and tell citizens who they may vote for (or against).  They decide who gets media coverage and who doesn’t.  They get to decide the American agenda, and it will always be an agenda that forces America and Americans to borrow anti-money into existence.  It will always be an agenda that makes never-ending wars that literally create so many enemies that threaten America, so that defense funding is “necessarily” and constantly increased through borrowing.  The economy MUST grow.

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” �" Napoleon Bonaparte

We have learned to instinctively think that we can solve our problems if we can throw enough anti-money at them.  

 We think we can get better teachers by paying them more, though research shows that the opposite is true.  
 We think we should build new schools, though research shows that our method of schooling is harmful.  
 We don’t believe Pavlov’s Law of Behavior.   We believe in punishment that doesn’t work.  
 We don’t believe that rehabilitation works.  Taking people out of poverty rather than forcing them deeper into poverty works.  
 We think that we will be safer if we lock up all the criminals at a cost that far exceeds the cost of a quality education at the finest boarding schools. We do this even though we know prison doesn’t deter crime.     It creates more violent criminals rather than rehabilitates offenders who are only trying to survive in an unequal and unfair world that our money system has created.  It turns the children of non-violent offenders into criminals because they grow up in poverty, often without one or more of their parents, and they live with chronic stress that does brain damage.
 We think we can be safer if we lock up addicts rather than require less-expensive and more effective treatment for the illness that is caused by attempts to cope with social inequality.  
 We think we can help ease poverty if we print more anti-money and throw it in that direction even though the printing of anti-money necessarily increases poverty.

Perhaps you sincerely believe that the best we can do is throw money at these problems in hopes of fixing or improving them.  But as anti-money IS the problem, and lust for wealth that in America IS power, the source of our problems, then anti-money cannot be the solution.  Throwing anti-money at the problems that anti-money creates only grows all of the problems in every sector because all of our social problems are SYMPTOMS of a single illness.  Anti-money feeds the great beast that is feeding on America, humanity, and life on earth.  It is digesting us.

“The few who understand the [banking] system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”
The Rothschild Brothers of London (a bank) writing to associates in New York


There has to be a better way.  There is.
 Chapter 5 O
Musical Money
Summary  &
Climbing out of the Belly of the Whale
IF WE CHOOSE TO DO THAT


Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
Emma Goldman


SUMMARY & WHAT TO EXPECT IF WE REMAIN PASSIVE:

Because of exponential population growth and dramatically declining resources caused by global warming that was caused by the need to grow the economy at all costs, the cost of goods and services will continue to increase (because of built-in inflation in combination with greater demand for decreasing resources) to the point of unaffordability for all but the wealthiest few.  This will keep the economy limping along until it simply can’t limp any longer.  At that point, barring intervention by one side or the other, the economy will have grown so large that there won’t be enough money to pay even a single interest payment on the debt that was pretended into existence.  The game of Musical Money will have come to an end.

Math never lies.  Unless we do something to stop the insanity, at some point, the math, combined with common sense, assures us that most of humanity will lose everything including life itself.  Most of this generation will have become inconvenient drains on the few remaining and still-dwindling resources, as well as enemies of those few who can still afford to buy essentials to life.  We will be viewed as pests�"an infestation whose numbers MUST be reduced in order to save the planet.  (Actually, because of exponential population growth on a finite planet, we are an infestation.)  By then, it will be too late to right the “still-rightable” wrong that has been done TO us in our own name.

We really are a people who have been suffering from battered women’s syndrome.  It has reached the point where it seems more dangerous to leave feudalism behind us than it does to keep it. If you haven’t read George Orwell’s “1984” in a while, perhaps it is time for a re-read.    

THE WAY OUT:

Granted, you have been TOLD that there is nothing you can do about all of this, and that only crazy people believe in utopia or anything approaching it.  But why then did the Iroquois never have ANY of the myriad of problems that we struggle with?  They did not use forced labor.  They did not have prisons, police, gallows,  Supreme Court, taxes,  IRS, intrusive intelligence agencies, grinding jobs in factories, or a government willing to use Black PSYOPS against its own people.  They didn’t use money.  No one was disenfranchised.  According to published accounts by well-respected people, they were MUCH happier and wiser than we are, and they valued one another as much as they valued nature, of which they were an essential part.   Their national cultures were loving towards one another and nature.

They worked together to provide for their common needs.  Nature, that was part of their common need, needed their protection.  It was a cooperative arrangement.  They served nature.  Nature served them.

They fulfilled the three pillars of motivation:  “Autonomy” (freedom of thought and freedom to choose a purpose), “Mastery” (the ability to get better at things), and “Purpose” (the joy of putting talent and abilities to use in service of something greater than themselves.)  They had abundant free time.  Joining together in community projects was more like a social gathering than a job.  

In the early days of America, before we lost our freedom, we did that too in rural areas.  We joined together for barn raisings and house raisings, or to build a bridge over the river or a gazebo in the town square.  Residents formed musical groups that played in the gazebo without expecting remuneration.  It was fun, everyone enjoyed it, and it brought communities together.  If someone’s crop or house was lost in a flood or tornado, or if the bread winner was injured, the family didn’t go hungry.  Neighbors took care of neighbors.  There was no government social safety network because it wasn’t necessary (until bankers ruled the day).  After the Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886, the government contributed a total of 24 tents.  Nothing more.  The people of the nation, on the other hand, sent so much in money and so many supplies that the mayor had to ask them to stop because they had more than enough.  We do have it within us to restore our relationships with ourselves, within our communities, and with the world.  As you will soon see, we are genetically wired for that.

In the pre-European-invasion Iroquois nation, no one was poor.  Equality was fundamental.  There was no domestic or child abuse problem.  Depression and mental illnesses were unheard of.  There were no murders, thefts, or assaults anywhere within the nations that composed the confederation.  Voting enfranchisement was universal, and only unanimous consent caused a law to take effect, automatically requiring the people to listen to one another in order to learn about any potential unintended consequences of any suggested law.  Solving problems was fun because cognitive thinking is fun and has been proven to be so.  It may be the most fun thing a human can do.  Solving problems also brought people together rather than separating them into factions, as our system inherently does.

The wisest were the leaders, and leaders were the servants of the will of the people.  They had no independent authority.  Mutual respect kept them from violating one another.  Voting was an integral part of the life-long Iroquois education system.  It was how children learned to use their cognitive thinking abilities that we are forcibly schooling out of our own children.  Children paid close attention and they participated.  Their words were listened to as carefully and respectfully as those of an elder.  Children were respected in ways America’s children have never known; in ways WE have never known.

Those who couldn’t take care of themselves were taken care of.   They lived amidst abundance far beyond that which is available to us today.  By contrast, we live amidst abundant scarcity.  Their lives were absent the stress that we endure in the name of survival,  stresses that are very literally and provably making us sick while causing a curable type of brain damage.  Their lives were gentler, their minds and bodies were well exercised, and they were a kinder and far happier people than we are.  They were the opposite of barbarians or savages.  

It is not only the Iroquois who had such governments.  Throughout the New World, many nations and tribes had the same government.  We know of the Iroquois government because they had a Constitution and they kept the best records of their history.  In the 19th century, anthropologists went around the globe to all seven continents, eager to learn about the hunter-gatherers before they went extinct.  All had the same form of government.  All valued peace and equality.  None used money or paid taxes.

We tend to forget that it is our culture that savaged, AND IS STILL ABUSING, native cultures.  They were acting in self-defense. We, not them, continually violate treaties and steal their land and enslave innocents.  We are the barbaric savages that are bringing unspeakable human rights violations around the world.  We are the ones who are bringing life on earth to an end.

It was the European culture that brought its love of inequality and feudalism held together by the marriage of a violence-promoting church and a tyrannical state composed of governing aristocrats, that destroyed these elegant people and the unending abundance that was once the New World.  Ours is the history of violence, oppression, and destruction that can be traced back to Emperor Theodosius of the fourth century who laid out the framework for the feudalism we live in today.

NO MATTER HOW DEEPLY ENTRENCHED OUR CULTURAL VALUES ARE, IF EVEN ONE CULTURE HAS BEEN ABLE TO TRANSFORM ITSELF FROM AN AGGRESSIVE AND VIOLENT, SUPERSTITIOUS, AND CANNIBALISTIC CULTURE TO A PEACE-LOVING, EGALITARIAN REPUBLIC�"A DEMOCRACY BY CONSENSUS�"THE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEMS IS NOT A UTOPIAN DREAM!  IT’S AN ATTAINABLE PROBABILITY.

The government that achieved that complete transformation was the longest standing of any such government, lasting 800 years until the European invasion that brought about the largest genocide in all of recorded human history�"one that made the Holocaust look like a bad accident at the playground.  In fact, it still exists over 1,100 years later.

It is time to recognize that the utopian ideal is not the impossible dream that we have all learned that it is supposed to be.  When we fully climb out of our delusion, we have the ability to achieve that which other cultures have achieved, and it is not just one culture that has achieved that transformation from violence and cannibalism to peace.  

Unless we step out of our denial and become the adults here, and we come together in our communities to do something to fix our common problems, we are in GRAVE danger.  This is not something to be left to those who put us in this danger and who are too transfixed by love of status, wealth, exclusivity, and power to do otherwise.  This is ours to do.  It takes all of us and each of us, working together as equals, because we are all together on this little blue dot called earth that is floating about in the vastness of space.  Status or wealth cannot save anyone from what is otherwise heading our way.  Nature doesn’t recognize artificial differences such as skin color, ethnicity, or national boundaries.  The rain falls (or does not fall) on the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the men and the women, members of one religion and members of another and members of no religion, and on one species as well as another.

The problem we face together is far more important than any artificial disagreement.   Surely we can set those small differences aside as we come together to save the earth and our own children from the already begun sixth mass extinction of life on earth.  The window of opportunity is quickly closing.  

We are now in a position where we have a choice.  We are in a position unique to any other time in the entirety of recorded human history.  We are in a position to do something that wasn’t possible at any time before us.  We can kill the beast that is digesting us.  Because we are now a single global community, connected through the cloud called the worldwide web, and because of recent discoveries in quantum physics and mind science, there is finally a way to do so in safety and in peace.

There is a silver lining to the very dark cloud that hovers over us.  There is a way out.  There is something that you were not taught and were even prevented from learning in mandatory public schooling that can save us.  

You were never allowed to become self-aware.  You were methodically led away from self-awareness.  As Fichte said: “[The student] must not even hear that our vital impulses and actions can be directed towards our maintenance and welfare, nor that we may learn for that reason, nor that learning may be of some use for that purpose.

Self-awareness brings enlightenment.  Enlightenment contains the ability to lift us all from the horrors that are fast approaching.  With enlightenment comes actual “powers” that you don’t know you have.  

Some humans know who they are, but few humans know WHAT they are.  We are an incredible species.  We are an amazing species!  We are nothing like what we have been told we are.  We have extraordinary abilities that defy common sense explanations.  We have been missing out on the best part of life because we don’t know that.  Not knowing that we have astonishing powers, we didn’t know how to use them, so we have been inadvertently using them against ourselves and others, just as we have been taught to do.  

We CAN fix what is wrong when we learn what our powers are and how to use them effectively.  We don’t have to lose things that we treasure, such as indoor plumbing, electricity, the Internet, and the like. With an explanation of these powers comes a sane and rational worldview that will make the crooked straight and the rough places plain.  

And with these powers come an understanding of what peace is, because peace, however misunderstood by our culture (and it is), is one of our powers.  It is a most amazing, beautiful, effective, and beneficent power, and it is ours to use.  It is our birthright!  Peace is no longer a vague unreachable ideal�"a word with no comprehensible meaning.  It is a real and verifiable power within each of us and all of us combined, in the most common-sense understanding of the word “power”.   Love is also a power in the same sense.  We have other even more amazing abilities.  They are testable.  You can prove them to yourself!

These abilities change everything!  They are our safe ticket out of this mess!

The time for rejoicing is near.

Author's Note

Extensive footnotes didn't copy.
Open to all suggestions, criticisms, and help

Reviews

[McBear]

This was really good. Maybe just break it into parts or chapters so people can read it easier.