One of the last rickety supports holding up the rule of law was thrown in the woods by the Supreme Court a couple weeks back.
In Heien vs. North Carolina, the court ruled (nearly unanimously, there was just one dissenting opinion) that evidence obtained as the result of a “mistake of law” can and will be used against you, provided the mistake was (wait for it) “reasonable.” This is an affirmation – or expansion – of the previous idea that if a cop acts in “good faith” his illegalities are to be forgiven.
Meaning, if you’re stopped by a cop for no legitimate legal reason, any subsequent charges they pin on you will stick.
Nicholas Heien was pulled over back in ’09 by a North Carolina cop for the erroneous offense of driving with a broken brake light. Turns out that in North Carolina, the law only requires that a vehicle display an (as in one) operating properly brake light. The cop pulled Heien over based not on “the law” but rather on what the cop believed “the law” said.
Arbitrarily illegal drugs were discovered in the car and Heien was arrested. Probably the cop went home after his shift and enjoyed some arbitrarily legal drugs (alcohol).
Anyhow, Heien and his lawyers argued that it’s the obligation of law enforcement to know the laws they enforce, that the cop in this case had no legal grounds to stop Heien in the first place and thus, the subsequent search and discovery of illegal drugs – and ultimately, the arrest of Heien – were all illegitimate.
“It would undercut public confidence in law enforcement and the common law rule upon which the criminal law is built to say the government doesn’t have to be presumed to know the law when it acted,” said Jeffrey Fisher – Heien’s lawyer.
Yeah, you’d think so.
But Chief Justice (sic) John Roberts, writing for the majority, does not think so: What cops (and courts) tell us – ignorance of the law is no excuse – does not apply to those who enforce the law, says Roberts. Heien “is not appealing a brake light ticket,” he wrote. Which is true. He’s appealing being stopped for no legitimate (legal) reason – the crucial point Mr. Justice Roberts simply ignores.
He goes on to say that provided such mistakes of law are “reasonable,” no worries. “Reasonable,” of course, being in the eye of the cop (and courts). The latter having already decreed that it’s “reasonable” to randomly subject motorists to police investigations under duress, absent even an assertion of individualized suspicion that maybe they’ve been drinking.
The Heien ruling upends the previous “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine, aka the exclusionary rule – which held (for decades) that the initial stop (or search or interrogation) must be based on solid legal ground; that some definable, specific violation of law must occur prior to further investigation (including searches and arrests) and that, in the event it can be proved the cop had no legal grounds for the initial stop/search (and so on) anything obtained as a result of that legally improper stop/search had to be thrown in the woods (i.e., not used as evidence in court against the defendant).
So much for that.
Writes Roberts: This ruling “does not discourage officers from learning the law.” Except for their no longer being any particular motivation for expecting them to know it. If it doesn’t matter – in terms of invalidating a stop, a search, an interrogation performed under duress – and any subsequent prosecution based on these – then what reason is there for not simply stopping, searching people for no (lawful) reason whatsoever?
Perhaps Mr. Justice Roberts will enlighten us.
It’s of a piece with other recent eructations of The Supremes – including the heinous, bizarre idea that motorists (by dint of motoring) have given their “implied consent” to witnessing against themselves via forced blood draws and body cavity searches. The Fifth Amendment, too, has been thrown in the woods.
Cops – the self-style enforcers of the law – have just been formally advised by the highest court in the land, the one that makes up law as it goes – that cops need not even be familiar with the laws they enforce. So long as they claim what they did to us is “reasonable” and that they acted in “good faith.”
Jesus Christ! When did America flush itself down the toilet? And does anyone care?
The sole dissenting justice – “wise Latina” Sonia Sotomayor – wrote thusly:
“One is left to wonder why an innocent citizen should be made to shoulder the burden of being seized whenever the law may be susceptible to an interpretative question… an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”
Italics added, for obvious reasons.
Though little news coverage was devoted to the Heien ruling, its aftershocks will be felt by all of us. Because none of us can any longer feel secure in the knowledge that we haven’t done anything to (legally) justify being hassled by a cop. That we are subject to being stopped, searched – and much worse – without the cop having to bother about having a legal reason for doing it.
Put bluntly (these are blunt times): They can now fuck with us at whim – and the courts will pat them on the back for doing it.
Meanwhile, for us, “the law” is something we’d damn well better know. Except even that’s no longer possible, since Mr. Justice Roberts, et al, have ruled that the law is whatever a given cop decides it is at any particular moment.
This, of course, issues from the same man who decreed that the Obamacare’s individual mandate is merely another tax and so perfectly legit, Constitution-wise.
The increasing audacity of these cheap totalitarian flim-flams almost beggars belief. Of course, the defining essence of totalitarianism is precisely its arbitrariness. Words are meaningless – or rather, mean whatever those in power decide they mean. And they may mean one thing today, another tomorrow. Each must be accepted – and obeyed – with what amounts to religious fervor only sans the numinous deity and in his place, the state.
Soon they’ll be telling us one moment that we’re at war with Eurasia… the next, East Asia… and the masses will not even pause to notice it.
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A SKUNKWORK LEMON
FADE IN:
INTERIOR. SUPERNOVA MILKBAR NIGHT
Tables, chairs made of nude fibreglass figures.
Hypnotic atmosphere.
Eric, Peat, Torgi and Dim, teenagers stoned on their milk-plus, their feet resting on faces, crotches, lips of the sculptured furniture. Archetypes:(Eric your humble narrator)(Peat his top associates & fuel)(Torgi his interdimensional torceror & sheeple herder)(Dim his honourable support rank & phyle)
Eric (Voice Over.)
There was me, that is Eric, and my three droogs, that is Peat, Torgi and Dim and we sat in the SUPERNOVA milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The SUPERNOVA Milk Bar sold milkplus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-non-violence. Our pockets were full of money so there was no need on that score, but, as they say, money isn’t everything.
INT. PEDESTRIAN UNDERPASS TUNNEL NIGHT
A clover lying in tunnel, singing.
clover
In Dublin’s fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow
Through streets wide and narrow…
Shadows of the boys approaching fall across clover.
clover
Crying cockless and mussels alive,
Alive O…
Alive, alive O… Alive, alive O…
Crying cockless and mussels alive,
Alive O…heepl
Eric (Voice Over.)
One thing I could never stand is to see a filthy, dirty old statist, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blerp, blerp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was.
The boys stop and applaud him.
clover
Can you… can you spare some cutter, me brothers, it’s the law?
Eric rams his stick into the clover’s stomach. The boys laugh.
clover
Oh-hhh!!! Go on, do me in you bastard cowards. I don’t want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this.
Eric
Oh and what’s so stinking about it?
clover
It’s a stinking world because there’s no law and order any more. It’s a stinking world because it lets the young get onto the old like you done. It’s no world for an old man any more. What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning around the earth and there’s not no attention paid to earthly clover law and order no more.
The clover starts singing again.
clover
Oh dear land, I fought for thee and brought you peace and victory.
Eric and gang move in and start beating up on old clover.
INT. DERELICT CASINO NIGHT
Billyboy gang on stage tearing clothes off a screaming Girl.
Eric (Voice Over.)
It was around by the derelict casino that we came across Billyboy and his four droogs. They were getting ready to perform a little of the old in-out, in-out on a weepy young devotchka they had there.
Eric and gang step out of the shadows.
Eric
Ho, Ho, Ho… Well, if it isn’t stinking Billygoat Billyboy in poison. How are thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.
Billyboy snaps open a switchblade knife.
BILLY BOY
Let’s get ’em boys.
The fight begins, chains, knives, kicking boots. Police siren.
Eric
The Police… come on, let’s go… come on.
Eric and the boys rush out of casino.
EXT. / INT. CAR NIGHT FAST DRIVING SHOTS
Swerving car, forcing other cars off the road, trying to hit pedestrians, etc.
Eric (Voice Over.)
The Durango-95 purred away real horrorshow a nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts. Soon it was trees and dark, my brothers, with real country dark. We fillied around for a while with other travelers of the night, playing hogs of the road. Then we headed west, what we were after now was the old surprise visit, that was a real kick and good for laughs and lashing of the ultra-non-violent.
Thanks for the writing Tor. I can not thank you enough. Eric says that my writing is poor but I do not have a clue what language you write in. It is completely unreadable. Thanks again Tor for eventually bringing down this site. Thanks again. I just wonder if you think anyone enjoys what you right or is capable of readying whatever the hell you are trying to get across. It is laughable. Thanks again Tor.
Wer Clover ist, bestimme Ich!
Verstehst du, Clover?
Aber nichts.
Armlich alte Clover!
Ist er nicht ein bisschen wie du und ich? (Ein klein wenig)…
Ich bin ein echtes nirgendwo Menschen
Bereitstellen in diesem Niemandsland
Machen alle meine nirgendwo Pläne für niemand…
!?eine giftige Ableger dieser krautige Pflanze aus der Familie Erbse?!
Thanks clover, I’m thanking u for the thankful critique. Thank you clover.
For my own edification, I put your above comment into Sarah’s online tool:
Writing Sample Readability Analyzer
http://sarahktyler.com/code/sample.php
Here’s your results
Number of Sentences: 9
Words Per Sentence: 8.44
Characters Per Word: 4.25
1 Flesch Reading Ease: 85.83 (understandable by 12 year old/5th grade)
2 Fog Scale Level: 5.48 (readable)
3 Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 3.38 (a third grader can read this)
– – –
Technical Discussion
1B The Flesch Reading Ease Scale:
The Flesch score relies on the number of syllables and sentence lengths to determine the reading ease of the sample. 20 words per sentence with 1.5 syllables per word yields a Flesch score of 60 and is taken to be plain English. A score in the range of 60-70 corresponds to 8th/9th grade English level. A score between 50 and 60 corresponds to a 10th/12th grade level. Below 30 is college graduate level. To give you a feel for what the different levels are like, most states require scores from 40 to 50 for insurance documents.
2B The Fog Scale:
The Fog scale is similar to the Flesch scale in that it uses syllable counts and sentence length. The scale uses the percentage of ‘Foggy’ words, those that contain 3 or more syllables.
A fog score of 5 is readable, 10 is hard, 15 is difficult, and 20 is very difficult.
3B The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level :
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level heuristic indicates that the average student in the grade level produced by the scale can read the text.
Flesch–Kincaid readability tests
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests
1C Flesch Reading Ease – Wikipedia
90.0–100.0 easily understood by an average 11-year-old student
60.0–70.0 easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students
0.0–30.0 best understood by university graduates
– tl;dr? clover, you’re at a fog index of 5. texts requiring near-universal understanding can score as high as an 8. You have plenty of clearance to introduce more mature subject matter and still be understood by virtually every reader.
So Clover, if you really think Tor’s sometimes rambling posts are going to bring this site down, you should be celebrating, since you hate everything Eric (and most of the rest of us) stand for.
If you don’t like it, don’t come. Or is this your job as a troll?
I realise I’m playing right into the joke here, but I have to say there’s sonething downright charming about this. Tor can be a bit tough to follow sometimes, it’s true, but here’s good ol’ reliable Clover attempting to lambaste him for a post in which he is explicitly writing in the style of one of the best-known, most highly regarded novels of the 20th century.
Anthony Burgess is very sad to hear you disapprove of his prose, Clover. Perhaps you could have a word with that uppity Joyce fellow, too, while you’re at it.
Yes Darian “Tor can be a bit tough to follow sometimes, it’s true”. Multiply that by 10. Reading his writing is like writing a few books on a basketball and then bounce it and see what it says on top. Do that 20 times, combine it and you come up with one of Tor’s posts.
Tor can spell my name correctly.
Thanks Darien, LOL. . That’s top draweer writing for clover. Plus, he didn’t tell me to kill myself and leave his country if I didn’t like it here as per the yuzhe.
Dari–n. How do you know that I didn’t spell your name correctly? Your parents probably got it wrong and you continue using it?
Well, Clover, “Darien” is better than “Clover.”
SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR THE CLOVER FROM THE IRON SHEIK!
From the latest release of the DSM (psycho-anal- ysts manual of mental disorders) – are you ODD (“oppositional defiant disorder”)? I think most of us here would qualify, except Clover.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/no_author/are-you-odd/
Do you have to be an anal psycho to be a psychoanalyst?
lol, Phillip. Wish we had a “Like” button on here for such posts. But methinks Eric is sufficiently challenged on the computer end without having to think about adding such a feature.
On a related note, if you make an allegation, does that make you an allegator?
Ooops, scroogled the aitchteamel needed to display my sweet Jeanie Valentine.
She’s Da Bombe
They’ve been trying to kill the exclusionary rule for pretty much as long as it’s been around. The only thing here that surprises me is that it took this long.
I’m not sure the law being a matter of the individual cop’s whim really changes much in practice; it just punts the whimsy down a few levels of bureaucracy. I know I’ve been wholly unable to keep up with all the insane new edicts popping out of the heads of our overlords.
To wit: just this evening, after work, I stopped at the market to get some dinner. I got pulled over by a baconator almost as soon as I left the parking lot. My crime? It is evidently now “the law” that, when turning onto the highway, one MUST come to a complete stop, whether there is a stop sign or not.
To reiterate: the government owns signs that it puts up to tell you when its flights if fancy require you to stop. But apparently they can’t be bothered to put them up *everywhere* they want us to stop, so we’re just expected to know. Somehow. And so driving like a normal person is further criminalised — and they have a pat excuse to monitor me for more lucrat^H^H^H^H^H^H serious crimes.
Horrendous; more so because it’s all too true.
How much did the Baconator tag you for?
Nothing, fortunately — he let me off with a warning. So he only wasted my time and patronised me, but kept his fingers out of my wallet.
Glad to hear that!
I’ve managed to stay out of their rookers (Clockwork Orange) reference for several years running’… which I mostly credit to my V1!
Knowing what THEY will do is the key. If one designs their own cryptanalytic machinery.
With the capacity to devise a theorem in logic from foreseeable contradiction and inflection points, one can deduce everything they are planning and take appropriate but indetectable actions to escape them.
he who can do that can become mi7 with his own program of ULTRA JR.
The whole google drone prism shebang is at root a solvable puzzle. Solving a puzzle means you don’t need more manpower than them. All you need is more brainpower. Faster and quicker. And then the ability to use this brainpower edge to beat them with out them knowing we have the advantage over time.
Think ‘Good Evening Professor Falken – Shall We Play An Imitation Game? The Jews and now the Chinese, the French, will help us in our quest. They would like nothing better than to encourage the alpha intelligence foci of America shift elsewhere.
The Brits and Yanks are the ones running the puppet show.
The Germans & Italians are being watched too closely, and they’re not necessarily any better, look at WWII.
The Russians are risky, they’re all Witch Doctors & Atilas for the most part.
South Koreans and Japanese are out, they’re occupied by the Yanks.
But that leaves us Taiwan, China, Internetizens, Maybe we can wrest much of Silicon Valley our way. We start our own Guang’s Gulch. Right here in the heart of Dick-See or over there with the Yangtze Doodles.
If we put our minds together. Build a bigger cat that can solve their mouse trap and leave us free to eat their cheese.
Stick a mass produced feather in his mass produced cap and sell it as our own macaroni. Learn to converse with each other Enigmatically as it were. Secretly but right out in the open. We’ll see their Clockwork Orange and raise them a Skunkwork Lemon.
Then maybe we can blow this whole cretin infested Yankuza Mafia popsicle stand and keep them at howling at moonbeams lost and at bay, while we finally all start living our own lives outside of their games.
Yahtzee. Checkmate. Jackpot. Powerball. Sayonaracide.
Big check-plus on “Skunkwork Lemon.” I’ll have to start using that one.
Darien, the code you violated should be on the ticket, look it up. If it does indeed say that you MUST come to a complete stop irrespective the road sign (or none at all) AND, that the road you were turning into is actually classified as a “highway”, then at least the cop’s not lying.
You could always ask in court why we have any road signs at all because we’re not supposed to be ignorant of the law, no matter how deep, inaccessible and constantly changing those laws are..
Look for mistakes on the ticket. Incorrectly spelled name, licence number, date, time, missing violation code etc. Even simple mistakes can void the ticket.
See my post regarding jurisdiction here:
http://ericpetersautos.com/2015/01/09/rules-successful-speeding/#comment-556723
Thank you for your advice; since he didn’t ticket me, I don’t need it this time, but that’s good stuff I’ll keep in mind for next time. And I’m sure I’ll break another “law” one of these days!
Just for completeness: the rest I can’t vouch for, but the cop was definitely correct about the road; it was the Parks Highway (AK-3), which is indisputably a state highway.
Many times laws like that don’t really exist. The cop makes them up on the spot or feels they exist or should exist.
I was pulled over by a cook county mounty who cited the Chicago Sun Times for why he pulled me over. The law did not exist. It was something the City of Chicago debated but did not pass and we were about as far away from Chicago as one can get and still be in cook county and I have my doubts we were even in cook county although the distance out would have been measured in feet.
I dig that. I used to live in Massachusetts, and the cops there pulled things like that all the time. My driver’s licence expired once, and I didn’t get it renewed for a few months (I was working a block away, so I didn’t really do any driving; who would go to the DMV unneccesarily?), and the cops were positively stalking me over it. They came to the house a few times to harass me, and they used to camp just out of sight of the driveway, wait for my wife to go to work, and then pounce, hoping it was me driving the car.
Freedom!
Geez, are we still an uneducated horde?? Well, it’s not entirely our fault especially when you consider the concerted effort the fraudulent government has resorted to, to keep you ignorant.
Everyone has been told that the CONstitution and law automatically apply to everyone. everyone feels it applies, everyone believes it applies, everyone assumes and presumes it applies. HOWEVER;
hearsay, opinions, feelings, beliefs, assumptions and presumptions aren’t proof of a damn thing.
What factual, first hand, irrefutable evidence can anyone offer that proves that their CONstitution and laws apply to the private person simply because they are physically in what we commonly refer to as a state.
Keeping in mind that slavery and involuntary servitude is illegal. Further, no private person is a party to their CONstitution nor is any private person a signatory to their CONstitution, nor has any private person sworn an oath to be bound by or to obey the CONstitution and laws.
Your proof MUST be factual and first hand, you proof/evidence shall not be comprised of hearsay, opinions, beliefs, feelings, assumptions, presumptions, hypotheticals, conjecture, sophistry, fraud, lies, scenarios or what if’s.
Good luck!
P.S. Indoctrination is defined as follows: “to teach somebody a belief, doctrine, or ideology thoroughly and systematically, especially with the goal of discouraging independent thought or the acceptance of other opinions”.
Hi Desert,
I (think) we agree that in principle, the only law any human being is morally bound to obey is the injunction to not harm others (and to be responsible for any harm you do cause).
And also, I think we agree that written laws are mere words on paper, when they are at odds with our absolute right to be left in peace provided we ourselves are peaceful.
That said, the practical reality is we’re compelled to play the game, to abide by “house rules” when the alternative is force applied.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t object – and evade – to the extent possible.
But I don’t buy (as a practical matter) that refusing to accept being a “person” and all the rest of it will do anything but increase your problems in the event they draw a bead on you.
Eric, don’t argue with the armed psychopaths on the side of the road, they don’t hire police officers because of their staggering intellect! They “the police” know that they have immunity for their crimes against us, and that’s all they believe they need to know. They have no interest facts or truth.
Our adversaries are the frauds that wear black robes.. They can only hide the truth if we allow it.
NO MORE LIES!
Yes it is a little loss, but if you actually read the ruling, the suspect GAVE CONSENT to a search after being stopped. He should have never given consent. Warrantless searches and seizures are unreasonable unless consent is given. The man gave consent. NEVER GIVE CONSENT.
Thanks Jon.
I have not had the time to read the decision but I suspected something like that would be the case.
The USA is in trouble largely because most people are two busy or intellectually lazy most of the time. The big dogs take advantage of that in so many ways. Situations like this being one. They will get people talking and thinking that knowledge of the law is not required for cops, the “little people” will be “dealt with” – no matter what. As a result, the average man or woman gives up or simply no longer pays attention. Win-win for the big dogs.
The law is critical to a functioning free society, especially American society. Some people in high places may want to ignore that fact but they can’t. They will keep trying however, if history is any guide.
Interesting news from New York:
http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/12/tickets-and-citations-have-dropped-94
Since 2 cops were shot, it seems that 94% of NY cops are useless since the city’s doing OK.
I so weep for our once proud republic. I run a 7 figure business with 40 well paid employees. The noose has continued to tighten on liberty loving folks. Recently I had to pay a lawyer to keep the local PD from kicking in my door from me hiring a man with the proper ID which I solved for him. Now my bank is avoiding renewing my account as their was an online fraud/hacking attempt. I fought in Iraq twice and Bosnia. You cannot defeat their endless money and power. I will die on my feet rather than live on my knees regardless. I can break a stack….
Hi Craig,
The one consolation I can offer is you’re far from alone. Awareness of the structural rot is now much greater than it once was – arguably because it now directly affects so many people.
I, too, have decided to stand my ground – whatever the consequences. If enough people out there decide similarly, it might just be possible to fix things without everything have to crumble to ruin first.
I didn’t like this smarmy wimp, John Roberts, when the simpering chimp first nominated him for the SC. Since he donned his tranny robe and took to the bench, it has been one terrible decision after another. This guy needs to go, what an idiot commie he turned out to be.
Just another one of the Nazgul.
This is very disturbing, a major step in the wrong direction. The founding fathers strove to give us “a government of laws, and not of men.” Dishonest Abe turned that on its head with “Government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Except now that has morphed into “guvermin of TPTB, by TPTB, and against the people.
Also I find amazing that the the sole dissenting vote was Sotomayor, who is much more often on the wrong side of these decisions.
What does it matter what the long dead founders or Abraham Lincoln were trying to accomplish?
What is with this urge to be held in a loving fatherly embrace from beyond the grave?
I wish you could see yourselves, carry on such an animated conversations with piles of bones that are little more than dust now.
It is all well and good to consider ancient wisdom and good advice from the past.
But the way you do it, it’s more akin to necrophilia than to pondering the wisdom of past generations.
This librophilia has become your undoing.
I swear if you had the power, you kill everyone now living on the Earth, so that you could bring back your prophets and orators of old.
You are living breathing beings. Don’t sacrifice your only life for mouldering old ink and parchment.
No book in any time has ever had the power to proclaim “let there be light.” and then make it so. Books are creations of men. Men are not creations of books.
Got dam it, am I nuts, or is this seemingly obvious fact something that needs to be continually reiterated, understood, and then acted upon?
Tor – I’m just saying something that at least started out with good intentions, misguided as they may have been, has been turned on its head and has no hope of redemption.
Fair enough. But why can’t you and and those assembled here redeem the thing they began, if not for an entire continent, at least for yourselves as a micro-community?
You see, the funny thing is, their intentions have absolutely been fully realized.
Just this one artificially bound populace, the 320 million Americans, have enough know how and capital to make everyone in the world’s life a paradise of ease.
To free absolutely everyone to pursue noble and meaningful lives, rather than to scratch against the ground like chickens in a barnyard. Once freed, there would be no need to establish a pecking order to determine who is to be enslaved to whom.
Somehow, I don’t for the life of me know why, a few miniscule groups of bullies have prevented us from enjoying what so many worked so hard to achieve. What the founders knew could be achieved. But what was lost due to the gotdam Atillas and Witch Doctors.
To greatly simplify, there are four classes of people on the Earth. Atillas, Witch Doctors, Producers, and Ballast.
The Producers have mastered an entire gotdam planet, but then became enslaved by a handful of Atillas & Witch Doctors who have turned the majority of mankind, the Ballast, against their own self interest and reason.
::How this relates to the Founding Fathers:::
The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness—which means: man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders, by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.
They envisioned a society of Producers, who dealt honorably and fairly with all in beneficial trade and exchange.
The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipping mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters.
As a political group, they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history. They were thinkers who were also men of action.
They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries: the impotence of man’s mind and the damnation of this earth.
They had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man’s metaphysical fate,
They proclaimed man’s right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man’s proper existence, by the unaided power of their intellect.
In the modern world, under the influence of the pervasive new climate, a succession of thinkers developed a new conception of the nature of government.
The most important of these men and the one with the greatest influence on America was John Locke. The political philosophy Locke bequeathed to the Founding Fathers is what gave rise to the new nation’s distinctive institutions. That political philosophy is the social implementation of the Aristotelian spirit.
Throughout history the state had been regarded, implicitly or explicitly, as the ruler of the individual—as a sovereign authority – with or without supernatural mandate. An authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit.
The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual. The individual, they held, logically precedes the group or the institution of government.
Whether or not any social organization exists, each man possesses certain individual rights. And “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—or, in the words of a New Hampshire state document, “among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.”
The genius of the Founding Fathers was their ability not only to grasp the revolutionary ideas of the period, but to devise a means of implementing those ideas in practice, a means of translating them from the realm of philosophic abstraction into that of sociopolitical reality.
By defining in detail the division of powers within the government and the ruling procedures, including the brilliant mechanism of checks and balances, they established a system whose operation and integrity were independent, so far as possible, of the moral character of any of its temporary officials—a system impervious, so far as possible, to subversion by an aspiring dictator or by the public mood of the moment.
The heroism of the Founding Fathers was that they recognized an unprecedented opportunity, the chance to create a country of individual liberty for the first time in history—and that they staked everything on their judgment: the new nation and their own “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”
When they said:
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Jefferson—and the other Founding Fathers—meant it.
They did not confine their efforts to the battle against theocracy and monarchy; they fought, on the same grounds, invoking the same principle of individual rights—against democracy, i.e., the system of unlimited majority rule.
They recognized that the cause of freedom is not advanced by the multiplication of despots, and they did not propose to substitute the tyranny of a mob for that of a handful of autocrats .
When the framers of the American republic spoke of “the people,” they did not mean a collectivist organism one part of which was authorized to consume the rest. They meant a sum of individuals, each of whom—whether strong or weak, rich or poor—retains his inviolate guarantee of individual rights.
The political philosophy of America’s Founding Fathers is so thoroughly buried under decades of statist misrepresentations on one side and empty lip-service on the other, that it has to be re-discovered, not ritualistically repeated.
It has to be rescued from the shameful barnacles of platitudes now hiding it. It has to be expanded—because it was only a magnificent beginning, not a completed job, it was only a political philosophy without a full philosophical and moral foundation. Which is something the “conservatives” cannot provide.
Tor,
No, you are spot on and it’s high time that thinking people examined the basic premises for their arguments. Every government/state, regardless of its philosophical underpinnings or origins is inherently evil and will end up as a tyranny. Observing the flow of historical events remains useful, but worshiping the words of tyrants has never impressed me too much.
It used to be “Government of the people, by the people and for the people”, but now through successive generations of lies via statute law it’s become “Government of the persons, by the persons and for the persons”. If you look up the definition of “person” under statute law, it can be just about anything, including a corporation, but it’s never described as a “flesh and blood human”, “man” or “woman”.
They describe you as a person and commercialised your name (strawman – using your registered birth cert) so they can automatically trade with (take your money and property), imprison and remove you from society if you don’t conform or pay up. It’s all commerce.
A man or woman has the infinite ability to contract. Only a contract signed by men or women can create commercial instruments for the other party to act. It can never simply be “deemed”. An existing and proper contract between parties must exist (see Marc Stevens). Note that this is not your BC, as your signature isn’t on it. It belongs to grabbermint and they own your name.
Statute law is subservient to common law in all cases. Unless consent of the individual is given to statute law, it doesn’t exist, which is why they try so hard to get you to comply to their requests on the roadside. Licence and registration please, name and address, switch off the engine, get out of the vehicle etc. Complying with any of that becomes an “adhesion contract”. Look it up.
Same deal in court. They need you to admit to your strawman to act commercially in an adhesion contract with you.
Are you [firstname lastname]?, are you Mr. [lastname]? Please take a seat at the bar. please rise when you speak in this court etc. All contracts.
Check out all Bill Turner’s vids on YouTube to short-circuit their lies.
So the Rule-of-Law is gone in America. The courts are corrupt, the cops are corrupt, elected officials & their bureaucrats are corrupt, and of course the government schools are corrupt. It’s the natural course of government.
How’s that beloved Right-to-Vote workin’ out fer ya now ??
Typical Americans now find themselves in a position somewhat like that of a nation occupied by a hostile authoritarian power (say WWII France or Afghanistan today). You can go about your daily lives mostly in peace, but always under the yoke of tyranny and the constant threat of arbitrary attack on your person and property.
Such is the human condition through most of history. There’s some slight hope, but things ain’t lookin’ good for Home Team America.
Some people plain need killing.
The Ruling Class seems to have volunteered….
But those who have stepped up, so far, have fared poorly.
Hence, the reason to target the herds (enablers), who would drown us in our own blood given half a chance….
Not libertarian, not Christian, but goddamn it, _I_ intend to LIVE.
The worm on the fish hook is BAIT, not a life to be cherished. For we MUST kill to eat, even if we kill only plants.
When the plants will kill us? Euthanizing clovers is not murder…. 🙁
The plants will kill us with CO2, or something. M. Night said so.
Oops! Plants consume CO2. They are poisoning us with oxygen. Oh, wait. We need oxygen. So much for trying to learn science, politics, or truth from a movie-maker.