Do you really want to live like this?

According to our Declaration of Independence, governments derive “…their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  But as demonstrated in the Middle East today, all government powers, just or unjust, are by consent of the governed; and that consent can be withdrawn from even the most oppressive dictators.

…Or one despot can be replaced with a worse one.  It’s a public choice.

So the problem with despotism is never really the despot.  The problem is that for every despot there is a majority of citizens who empowered that despot.  Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Caligula and countless others didn’t kill hundreds of millions by themselves, you know.   Do not fool yourself; people like Kim Jong Il, Charles Taylor, Hirohito, Mugabe, Quadhafi, Nebuchadnezzar II, Nero or even Vlad the Impaler are everywhere and always among us.  They are nobody special by themselves.

Here in the USA, we can conveniently, painlessly choose how we are to live.  Deny it or not, we have exactly what the majority of us have freely chosen.  We may say we want change, but we vote for mostly elites and incumbents from only two private clubs (the D and R parties).  We may say we don’t like the corruption and money in politics, but less than 10% of us ever vote for anything else.  Many dictators of the past century, including Benito Mussolini, were elected by people just like us.

So consider what we’ve chosen.  We’ve not had even a year’s peace since the War to End All Wars.  The Home of The Brave has sacrificed freedom for empty promises of security.  The Land of The Free has the world’s highest percentage of citizens in prison.  We really do tax people out of their homes to pay for homelessness programs; and we tax, regulate and litigate away businesses to stimulate the economy.  We guard borders everywhere in the world except at home.  For the first time ever, we’re working longer hours, taking fewer vacations, spending less time with our kids, and living more poorly than the previous generation.  The rules we must live by are unknowable and ever-changing – law has now become little more than incantations, as high priests of law in grand courts decree, apparently on whim, how things are to be.

Are you happy with this?  Is this how you want to live?

Humans can learn.  When we want something, we know all about our choices of material, spice, color, flavor, engine size, craftsmanship, price or caliber.  We spend crazy amounts of time on sports, or on romance novels.  I know people who can tell you the vertical jump height of their favorite basketball stars, or can detail Oprah’s diet ups and downs.

But by what I’ve personally seen in tens of thousands of average voters, We The People apparently don’t care about the injustice and madness we’ve chosen to make of our lives.  We know less about those we’ve chosen to lord over us than we know about movie stars.  We certainly don’t know anything about our state and federal constitutions.

Despite what we may say, our VOTES say that we want unaccountable people of status and money to tell us what to do.  Our behavior in the voting booth is beckoning a dictator.  I believe we’re going to get one soon.

May I make a request?  I’d like for you to read your state and federal constitutions and see what we’ve thrown away…and could have back anytime we choose.  They are still law, though we act otherwise.  They would still work better than anything else ever tried, if we’d only try them. If you’ve taken the hour or so it takes to read the federal constitution, you already know that federal government should be invisible to almost all of us almost all the time.  The Indiana constitution is the contract most relevant to Hoosier life.  It’s a longer read, more messed-up over time, but still not terribly long or complicated.  Both comprise rules of life that are few enough to know, simple enough to understand, and important enough that everybody should obey them without exception, all the time. 

The freer life these contracts describe is simpler, safer, and in every way better than the politicized lives we’re living now.

You can read these constitutions (with my annotations)here: https://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/annotated-usa-constitution.pdf https://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/indiana-constitution-book.pdf

Please ask other people to read them too.  If you know somebody who wants to read them, and has no internet access, and you’re too cheap to print them out yourself, then contact me at thefreedomfarm@gmail.com, and I’ll get you copies. Yes; it’s that important to me.

I have to live here too…

 

We never asked…

I intend to deliver the following to the Governor’s Office with a press conference at noon on July 4 on the east steps of the statehouse.

I believe this is the the most appropriate date (and a date upon which I’d staged yearly protests until 2008). I think it’s the most appropriate place to start for this Step One (a polite request to the correct officer).

I hope a good number of people, including you, can show up to join me:

 

Dear Governor Daniels,

We have read our state and federal constitutions. We understand their purpose and legal authority. And now we both understand, and suffer, the breadth and depth of our society’s transgressions against these fundamental laws.

These transgressions have occurred by public choice, and progressively over many generations, so we did not see the damage we were doing. But we do see that damage now.

It would be both tedious and unnecessary to detail the errors and resultant harm done, or to list our many reasons for wanting the illegality to end.

We will supply at least a partial list of serious grievances and injuries if that would help you remedy the breach of social contract that caused them. But our requested remedy is both simple and proven to work better for liberty, security, prosperity and justice than anything else yet tried in the history of human governance:

We ask only that you execute Rule of Law under existing Indiana and federal constitutions, exactly as these laws are written.

Governor Daniels, we want these laws to be enforced without exception, all the time, as soon as possible. They are few enough that everyone can know them; simple enough that everyone can understand them; and important enough that everyone, particularly agents and officers of government, should obey them all without exception, proviso or privileged classes, all of the time.

The laws leave no room for selective enforcement, or preferential treatment by corporate abstraction, class or process. All citizens are to be equal under the laws, and no person is above the laws. No legitimate political authority exists outside of that granted by the plain sense of our constitutions. All governing agencies, actions and rules that exist outside constitutional limitations are, by the clear words and purpose of the constitutions, null and void.

If any part of a constitution is so unclear as to prohibit enforcement, there is a constitutional process for clarifying it in print. But we herewith submit annotated copies of each constitution on the expectation that you will see little that is vague or open-ended in either contract. These annotated constitutions are also freely available online at:

https://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/annotated-usa-constitution.pdf

https://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/indiana-constitution-book.pdf

We understand that as seriously as we have failed over the generations, it will take some time to restore legitimate authority to our civil government, and peel back the false accountabilities and destructive dependencies accumulated over generations. We propose that five years is more than sufficient to phase out all illegal political entities, processes, rules, precedents, actions and taxes; and to enact amendments and phase-out plans necessary to ensure full constitutional obedience.

Yet current budget and social conditions demand all possible speed, and history demonstrates an invariable and harsh penalty for delay. Please do immediately employ the legal and political authority that is yours, to restore what is, by law, ours.

Thank you

Here are a few specific conclusions drawn from a simple reading of the constitutions, and requiring immediate action:

1. Precedents, in courts or in policy, are not law; nor are “Executive Orders” law. Only the legislative branch can write laws, and then only in the domain authorized. Courts may not write laws, bureaucracies may not write laws, and executives may not write laws. Therefore, all such illegal “laws,” regulations, orders, rules and mandates are null and void. They must be declared so, and denied enforcement, as quickly as possible.
2. Baseless currency is illegal. Mandated, monopoly currency issued by unconstitutional transnational private banks, is illegal. Therefore, we ask for a restoration of specie payments and gold and silver-based currency as quickly as possible.
3. It makes no sense, nor is it constitutionally permissible, to tax private property owners for our Common Schools. We certainly don’t need taxation to facilitate the current wide and deep discrepancies between rich and poor, and it is illegal. We ask for the restoration of a constitutional Common School fund as quickly as possible.
4. There can be no serious doubt about what a Common School system actually is. No other education system is in the authorized domain of state or federal government. We ask for the end of any political involvement in education outside of what’s authorized as a legitimate Common School system; or at least amend the constitution to describe new limits.  

The following are additional thoughts for our consideration only:

Note: In case you’re wondering why I don’t address our Governor as “The Honorable;” titles like “The Honorable” or “Esquire” are specifically unconstitutional…and for good reason.
Note: some media folk (particularly the Indianapolis Star) will do their level best to cubbyhole you to something easily dismissed. Resist their attempts to brand us “Tea Party,” “anti-government,” “anti-union” or anything else in the news. Stay on subject. Do not allow them to draw you into another subject that they’ll quickly apply to all of us.
Please: Anything you say outside of Rule of Law under existing constitutions, as written, will ruinously derail our message. DO NOT BRING UP ANYTHING ELSE. No gay marriage, war, tax…anything but ROL under existing constitutions, as written.
Please: Dress nicely, and come neatly groomed. Be as pleasant and yet firm, as possible. This would not be a good time for joking around or bringing/wearing props. This is serious; we must be serious, solid citizens.
DO NOT FORGET: We are the pro government people. We want to govern our government, restore legality to our lawmakers and justice to our judiciary. We are the ones who are legitimate, correct, and on the legal side of the law.

PLEASE NOTE: This is more of a mea culpa than a protest. We The People have what We The People have chosen repeatedly through the past hundred years. We must admit the error of our ways, and choose better. We have no cause for anger…not yet.
Extra Special Double-Note: I repeat: we have gotten into our mess because nearly everybody has chosen it, progressively, and over generations. Most people still cannot imagine what kind of trouble we’re in. If they could, they would not believe that they’re to blame. Remember, we’re not asking so much of our politicians as we are of We The People. We’re asking voters/citizens to change themselves. It is a big enough task to get people of extraordinary political understanding to join us… let us try to show patient understanding to those who still just don’t get it.
PS: I wrote that last note largely to me.

Here’s the key thing:

Tell everyone you know to check out the letter to our Governor, send it to their state legislators, and ask them to add their in-person support to our little endeavor.

Liberty or Bust!

Andy Horning

Freedom, IN

thefreedomfarm@gmail.com