Bureaucratic Domination

"All men having power ought to be mistrusted" – James Madison

John Dixon stated that it was his conviction "that every free state should incessantly watch and instantly take alarm on any addition being made to the power exercised over them."

Bureaucratic domination

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton's dictum is not a cliche, it is a tragic truth. And, unfortunately, the lust for power is an innate vice of many men. The pages of history run red with the blood of those who have lived in misery and died in agony under the absolute power of tyrants.

To protect the new Nation from this fatal vice of mankind, the founders of our Republic acted on the maxim enunciated by Thomas Jefferson: "In matters of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

But we have neglected our Constitution, relaxing the vigilance with which we should have enforced it, thereby permitting gradual and systematic encroachment on our liberties. Even now, when a vast and greedy bureaucracy has almost openly become our master, we try to reassure ourselves with the hope that it can't happen here.

The erosion of the Constitution by shifting the powers from the States to the Federal Government, and within the Federal Government, the legislative activity from the Congress to the Executive Branch has continued unabated during the last fifty years. Indeed this process has accelerated during the last ten years. The step by step loss of our freedom and individual liberties in our Nation is happening at an alarming pace through the use of, and now openly admitted, abuse of Executive Orders, Presidential Decisions and Regulations applied as law by unelected bureaucrats. This rapid expansion in responsibilities and authority by executive agencies under such departments as Interior, Justice, Agriculture, Energy, Treasury and others are occurring because of both the assumption of powers by an aggressive executive branch and the abrogation of specific legislative activity by Congress.

Executive Orders have been initiated during the last five years which were designed to reduce the powers of the State to the point of irrelevancy and could move the Nation into a condition of government by Executive fiat and under a Regional Control by unelected bureaucrats substituted for the State governments.

Grants of returned taxes with mandates by Congress, combined with executive orders which reduce the State Governments closer and closer to irrelevancy, are making a shambles of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution (the reservation of all other powers to the States and to the people). Without the Constitutionally required approval by our Congressional representatives, the Executive Branch has been openly implementing the provisions of unratified, United Nations Treaties at a rapid pace. A torrent of laws and regulations are gushing from Congress and the Executive Branch, micro-managing every facet of the honest law-abiding citizen's life and attempting to make every crime a federal crime, and every offensive behavior a crime.

Financing Socialism

Unfortunately, it not only can happen here, but it is happening here. Our Government is little by little wresting from the people the right to own and operate the productive enterprises the people have created. And we can no longer avoid the unhappy realization that our income taxes pay for the destruction of our rights.

It is an appalling fact that Americans, who have never known military defeat, have been forced by their Government, under the pretext of economic aid, to pay more tribute to foreign socialistic and communistic governments than all the vanquished peoples of the earth have paid to their conquerors.

At home our whole economy is being overgrown by a jungle of bureaucratic agencies with strange names and often incomprehensible activities, which operate without the slightest pretense of constitutional authority, and whose very existence is unknown to most of the taxpayers from whom they suck their nourishment.

Now what is really appalling – is that these words were written 37 years, ago in 1963 by those citizens who were actively promoting the endorsement of the Liberty Amendment by the State Legislatures. and that in the more than three decades since, the almost daily new activities of the Federal Government, which usurp powers belonging to the States, and which inspired these words by these Constitutional patriots, have increased exponentially. Today the loss of individual liberties is happening so often that it is almost accepted as reasonable and natural.

16 American Jurisprudence 2d, Sovereignty of states, §281 [Legal encyclopedia]:

"The original thirteen states existed prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution and before that time possessed all the attributes of sovereignty. All these attributes except those surrendered by the formation of the Constitution and the amendments thereto have been retained. But the sovereign power of the states is necessarily diminished to the extent of the grants of power to the federal government in the Constitution, and it is subject to the restraints and limitations of the Constitution.

"New states, upon their admission into the Union, become invested with equal rights and are subject only to such restrictions as are imposed upon the states already admitted. There can be no state of the Union whose sovereignty or freedom of action is in any respect different from that of any other state. There can be no restriction upon any state other than one prescribed upon all the states by the Federal Constitution. Congress, in admitting a state, cannot restrict such state by bargain. The state, by so contracting with Congress, is in no way bound by such a contract, however irrevocable it is stated to be. It is said that subject to the restraint and limitations of the Federal Constitution, the states have all the sovereign powers of independent nations over all persons and things within their respective territorial limits."

J. Reuben Clark, Jr., Former Under-Secretary of State wrote 22 years ago in the Freemen Digest, 1978:

Taxes as a tool to redistribute the wealth

"In the economic field, this earth-wide conflict has taken the form of seizing without compensation from the man who has and giving to the man who has not, of taking from the worker the fruits of his work, and giving to the idler who does no work. It has from its very nature become an economic, uncompensated leveling downward, not upward, of the whole mass. This is the result in every country in which it has been tried. That this result may in one country be reached by confiscatory taxation, and in another by direct seizure, is a mere matter of method. The result is the same. In some countries out right seizure and confiscation are already openly and shamelessly practiced. All is done in the name of the State, as if it were Deity – as if the State, not God, gave all."

And there is certainly ...

The growing menace of a police-state government

"In the field of government, self-perpetuating government groups are setting themselves up, either through a revolution, an overturning of the old system and the setting up of a new one, or by a perversion and prostituting of the old system into a new one.

Here again the matter is merely one of method. Of what use is an election free in outward form, if the government shall name the candidates." "In the new state of the world, laws and courts have lost their wonted places. Secret police, the curse of peoples, arrest, sentence, and punish as their unhampered whim, prejudice, or hate may desire. Public justice has fled the state."

And he wrote on:

Attack on the family and religion

"Even into the field of family relationship, which, next to man's relationship to God, is the most precious and dearest of all relationships, this modern State is thrusting its polluting hand. In some lands this new State is robbing the parents of the custody of their children on the Sabbath, it is forbidding the parents to teach and admonish the children in the ways of righteous living, it is teaching the children that officers of the State, not God, shall be looked to for a guide as to standards of life ..."

J. Reuben Clark Jr. continued in the Freemen Digest of August 1978:

The individual versus the state

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth, more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the State. Does the individual exist for the benefit of the State, or does the State exist for the benefit of the individual?...

This gigantic world-wide struggle more and more takes on the form of a war to the death. We shall do well and wisely so to face and so to enter it. And we must all take part.

Indeed, we are taking part in that struggle, whether we will, or not. Upon its final issue, liberty lives or dies.

All of this was clear to Mr. Reuben Clark in 1978. The protection of our liberties and freedom by the Constitution and its Bill of Rights (more accurately the Bill of Prohibited Federal Powers) has eroded more rapidly during the last 22 years, and has crumbled at a terrifying pace during the last 8 to 10 years. The potential for the tyranny of a police-state, of which Mr. Reuben spoke over two decades ago, is building with every Executive Order. Every act of Congress which takes away another liberty, in the name of security, in the current " War Against Terrorism", brings us closer to total loss of individual freedom, and absolute despotism.

The Declaration of Independence issued on July 4, 1776, says in part:

... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing variably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off each government and to provide new guards for their future security. ...

Although that was written almost 225 years ago, the opening lines above describe accurately the course of our Federal Government.

More than two decades later after J Reuben Clark wrote about our problem with the slide to police powers, and in stress of terrorist threats, Congressman Ron Paul had this to say in a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives:

Are we doomed to be a police state

[Excerpted from a Speech before the U.S. House of Representatives June 27, 2002 by Congressman Ron Paul]

Since September 11th, Congress has responded with a massive barrage of legislation not seen since Roosevelt took over in 1933. Where Roosevelt dealt with trying to provide economic security. Today's legislation deals with personal security from any and all imaginable threats, at any cost - dollar or freedom-wise. These efforts include:

• The Patriot Act, which undermines the 4th Amendment with the establishment of an overly broad and dangerous definition of terrorism.

• The Financial Anti-Terrorism Act, which expands the government's surveillance of the financial transactions of all American citizens through increased power to Fin Cen and puts back on track the plans to impose "Know Your Customer" rules on all Americans, which had been sought after for years.

• The airline bailout bill gave $15 billion, rushed through shortly after 9/11.

• The federalization of all airline security employees.

• Military tribunals set up by executive order – undermining the rights of those accused – rights established as far back in history as 1215.

• Unlimited retention of suspects without charges being made, even when a crime has not been committed – a serious precedent that one day may well be abused.

• Relaxation of FBI surveillance guidelines of all political activity.

• Essentially monopolizing vaccines and treatment for infection diseases, permitting massive quarantines and mandates for vaccinations

• Almost all significant legislation since 9/11 has been rushed through in a tone of urgency with reference to the tragedy including a $190 billion farm bill as well as fast track.

• Guarantees to insurance companies are now moving quickly through the Congress. Increasing the billions already flowing into foreign aid is now being planned as our interventions overseas continue to grow and expand.

• There's no reason to believe that the massive increase in spending both domestic and foreign, along with the massive expansion of the size of government, will slow any time soon. The deficit is exploding as the economy weakens. When the government sector drains the resources needed for capital expansion, it contributes to the loss of confidence needed to grow.

• Even without evidence that any good has come from this massive expansion of government power, Congress has established a huge new bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, hoping miraculously through centralization to make all these efforts productive and worthwhile.

• There is no evidence, however, that government bureaucracy and huge funding can solve our nation's problems. The likelihood is that the unintended consequences of this huge new department will diminish our freedoms and do nothing to enhance our security."

The Liberty Amendment, in whole and in part, has been introduced in Congress by Representative Ron Paul during his last two terms. With the help of his Liberty Committee a number of significant legislative acts have been introduced, designed to restore individual property rights, individual, State and National Sovereignty, and to ward off a host of assaults on other rights. We must, of course, support these acts with all our strength to gain time, and to stop the hemorrhaging of our rights. But we must also be aware that this legislation can be negated anytime at the whim of Congress.

Thus it is our right, it is our duty – your right and your duty – to provide new guards for our future security.

Most fortunately, because of the Constitution of the United States there is no need today to throw off our form of government. All we need to do is to clarify the meaning of the Constitution to give renewed force and effect, and thenceforth to cherish and respect it, insisting constantly that it be respected and obeyed by all persons.

For just this purpose, the Liberty Amendment has been designed to clarify, not change, the intent of our Constitution. It is designed to restore the balance of powers between the branches of the federal government, and between the federal government, the states, and the people, in the Republican form of government guaranteed by the Constitution.

If the erosion of the Constitution is ever to be stopped, at least 20 additional state legislature approvals of the Liberty Amendment are urgently needed.

We, are now in this third year of a new millennium and have been given at least two years of Republican control of our executive and legislative branches of the federal government. With this change, there may be a feeling of relief among some, that we could soon have the smaller and unoppressive republican form of government given us by our Founders. Nothing, however, is further from the truth. Unfortunately, a huge increase in the size of our federal government, a Department of Homeland Security has been established by Congress, and is being manned by the current administration for what is hoped to be security against terrorist attacks. The best kept secret of the day is that the Constitutional responsibility for centuries of the Department of Defense has been the "Defense of our Homeland" not "Defense of the World" to which that huge, now missionless force appears to be headed. It is, then, absolutely imperative, that we continue to drive for the ratification of the Liberty Amendment in order to clarify this issue of such great importance to all Americans and to their posterity.

There is far too little time to act and the Liberty Amendment is the last opportunity to restore liberty and freedom for the American people. So, we all have to work hard, both as individuals and by organizing local Liberty Amendment committees, to multiply our strength. We must convince our state legislators to approve the Liberty Amendment by resolution and to certify that approval to Congress so it will be forced to initiate the ratification process.

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