GCN Political Analysis

Book of Days

Voters Are Now Realizing Obama Could Be Writing The Closing Chapter On America.  Fortunately, The Constitution Still Has The Keys To Thwarting Such Plans.

By Perry Hicks and Keith Burton- Special to GulfCoastNews.com   8/6/09

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.- Preamble to the United States Constitution

In penning the Constitution of the United States of America, the Founding Father’s original intent was to guarantee our Natural Law Rights- that is, those rights granted to us by God so that no government can legitimately take them away.  They did this not just for themselves, but also for those who would come after them- their posterity.

The Constitution is then far more than a blue print for creating a government.  It is a sacred document.

In ratifying the Constitution, the original thirteen states erected the world’s sole guiding light to liberty.  Over time that light has led much of the world out of a wilderness of tyranny.

Extinguishing that light would cast 6 billion people into political darkness and so this goal has become the holy grail of the radical far left.

While it would be correct to state our individual rights have been under assault since the very founding of the Republic, it would also be accurate to say that until the rise of social progressivism, the existence of our divine individual rights have never been denied.

But they are being denied now with the administration of Barack Hussein Obama, the first U.S. president born and raised outside of the continental United States.  Assisted by a congress dominated by Democrats and liberal Republicans, not only is the assault on our individual rights escalating, America’s virtues are also being repudiated.  Good is being spoken of as if it were evil.

Accordingly, some fear these developments are dictating the final chapters on America; the ending to a book detailing the last days of liberty.

While the socialists may appear to be winning, there is still reason to have faith.  Pushback is mounting against the Federal usurpation of power and the sacred articles and amendments are still working to protect our liberty of blessings.

America may have reached a turning point and any such book of days might actually be chronicling the coming of a Second Revolution. 

The Third Amendment

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.- Third Amendment to the United States Constitution

In America, governmental power does not come from a monarch or a body of feudal lords, but from the people.  And as previously stated, the Framers of the Constitution intended their new government to not just safeguard God-given and other rights for themselves, but also for their posterity.  That posterity is us, the lawful citizens of the United States.

To implement this dictum, the Constitution incorporated ten original amendments referred to as the Bill of Rights.  Each one was not intended to be just a barricade against tyranny, but also a process by which tyrannical acts could be righted.  Hence, even slavery and its discriminatory aftermath has been corrected.

It is easy to forget that the process of liberty is not a finished work, as evidenced by the foresight the founding fathers gave to the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights. A document that even today we can find profoundly new understanding.

The Founding Fathers numerically ordered these amendments according to their import.

Freedom of speech came first because the right to express one’s conscience and exchange ideas is not only central to the freedom of autonomous citizens, it is vital to the good functioning of a democratic republic. 

The second was the right to possess and carry the weapons necessary to not only defend oneself, one’s loved ones, and one’s home from attack, but as the Constitution specifically asserts, is crucial to the defense of the Republic itself.

With certainty, being denied either or both 1st and 2nd Amendment Rights is to subordinate the citizen to the state.

However, the same thing can be said of the 3rd Amendment because it prevents the government from forcibly projecting itself into our homes.

Expressed another way, the Third Amendment guarantees citizens the right to determine their home’s environment; the right to determine what kind of home our home will be.

If one were to extend the definition of home to our general community, the present accommodation government is making to an invading army of illegal aliens violates the Third Amendment.  Government is allowing outsiders to forcibly shape America to their vision, hence the requirement to “press one for English.”

However, displacing lawful citizens from jobs, requiring them to pay burdensome taxes to provide social services and medical care for illegals, and making the English language an inconvenient alternative, is not the only evidence of intrusion.  There are other more deleterious affects on our home environment; crime.

A point unrestricted immigration proponents liked to avoid is the label “illegal.”  The reality is all illegal immigrants are lawbreakers just by virtue that they have entered our country contrary to our immigration laws.  If cornered with this fact, the same proponents will try to argue that if the “undocumented” aliens have committed a crime, it is a victimless one.  After all, “they are only here to do the work Americans won’t do.”

However, owing to all of the ill-effects associated with illegal immigration, this assertion is also a lie:

• In Florida, horse owners are finding their animals killed and butchered to provide foreigners a valued delicacy.  Because of the massive influx of illegals from a wide band of countries, horse owning Americans now have to endure the terror of discovering the ghastly carcasses of their beloved pets who had been slaughtered- possibly being butchered while they were still alive.
• Non-citizens constitute about 30 percent and illegals comprise about 17 percent of the Federal prison population.  Both numbers are surprisingly disproportional to their representation in the general population.  However, it is clear non-citizens have brought massive levels of crime into our communities that would otherwise not have existed.
• Along the Border States, home invasions and kidnappings for ransom has become epidemic.  Those kinds of crimes are now finding their way deeper into the American interior.  Other crimes, such as identity theft, are also rampant.
• Illegal immigration has either imported or otherwise spawned violent gangs, such as the Mara Salvatrucha 13, or MS 13, arguably one of the most violent criminal organizations in the United States.  It has spread eastward from the Border States like a cancer with major cells clustered along the U.S. Route 1 corridor and has been reported  by law enforcement to exist on the Mississippi Coast.  MS13 is not here take jobs Americans won’t do like picking lettuce.  MS 13 is here to be a major player in drugs, prostitution, and human trafficking.
• According to the U.S. Justice Department, illegal alien inmates make up to half the prison population of California.  Since the prison system is running at 200 percent capacity, a Federal Court ordered California to reduce the prison population by up to 40 percent.  Simple math would indicate that if the illegals were simply deported, the problem would be solved.  Yet this solution has never been put on the table.

However, overcrowded prison systems are only part of California’s problems. The cost of educating the children of illegals and providing medical care has also become burdensome.  It is no coincidence that California, the 6^th largest economy in the world, has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.  In this regard, size does not matter.

Illegals have also brought with them diseases such as tuberculosis that America had at one time virtually eradicated.  Furthermore, illegals also harbor a reckless disregard for hygiene that has brought salmonella into our food chain and other parasites, such as bed bugs, into our homes and service industries.

If Americans do not want to see their bankrupted communities turned into third-world hell holes, the government’s accommodation of illegal aliens must end.

Pushing the spirit if not the letter of the Third Amendment would be one way to start.  Americans have the express right to self-determination and as the Third Amendment makes perfectly clear, that right of self-determination extends to their homes and communities, as well.

The Ninth & Tenth Amendments

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. - Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution

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. – Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

When one considers that a 19^th Century citizen would have had little contact with his local government much less the state or Federal, it is truly shocking to realize how nearly every aspect of our lives is being affected by government.

While the 9^th & 10^th Amendments prohibit the Federal Government from assuming powers not specifically enumerated to it, early Progressives quickly learned how to twist constitutional language to mean what it clearly does not and did so for no other purpose than to usurp even enumerated powers from the people.

Thus, if the Second Amendment phrase “shall not be infringed” may be construed to prohibit the bearing and ownership of firearms in one’s own home, think how contorted the issue of “navigable waters” could be within the context of interstate commerce.

This power grab is an extension of the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890.  A change in the Constitution taking the election of U.S. Senators away from the state legislatures and the direct Federal taxation of citizens further strengthened bureaucratic tyranny.

Federal interpretations of Interstate Commerce Clause has been repeatedly expanded to the point that the Federal Government just doesn’t claim authority over shipping traffic on our rivers, canals, and seaways, but the ownership of the water itself.

Historically, Common Law allocated water rights amongst the various landowners whose property was in contact with the streams, rivers, or lakes according to the amount of land touching the subject water.  However, this practice of water allocation, termed Riparian Rights, is now endangered.  Congress is considering a bill to make all water, no matter where it is found- groundwater, lakes, streams, and ditches along our neighborhood streets- Federal property.

If that seems preposterous, consider that for years certain categories of dry land have for environmental purposes been interpreted to be a navigable waterway.

The sum total of these incremental usurpations has left us struggling to retain the ownership of our homes and our home communities, much less any vision we may have for them. Nor has the federal government prevented the encroachment of local governments on our property as a result of levies of local property taxes, which has left most everyone, as renters. And if you fail to pay local taxes, your property will be seized and sold.

The government has encroached into not just all manners of industry but also our mortgage loans, our schools, our private family life,  our children’s births, and with health care “reform,” literally facilitating our death.  Consider the following:

• The government permits “women’s health centers” to operate for the purposes of aborting babies up to the moment of birth and babies that survive a botched abortion may be allowed to die without medical treatment.  It doesn’t matter that the original proponent of abortion, Margaret Sanger, was a socialist, a virulent anti-Christian, and whose application for abortion included eugenics.
• Doctors and nurses are in some cases being told that they must effectively hold to Sanger’s world view and perform or assist in abortions over their personal or religious convictions.
• As of 1990, the age to which children must be registered with the Social Security System has been rolled back to just one year old.  This edict is enforced through Federal taxation.
• School Boards have been elevated above the Constitution.  Despite the 1^st Amendment Right of the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion, children in some school systems have been forbidden to pray, sing hymns, carrying bibles, possess tracts or other religious items while on school property. In some cases they have even been ordered to not wear the colors red and green during Christmas and Christmas Trees are treated as if they were something offensive.  Fortunately, the Constitution’s 1^st and 14^th Amendments along with U.S. Code 42 1983 has permitted citizens to fight back and school boards have hence been put on notice.  However, teachers and administrators are still forbidden to openly pray or sing songs of a religious nature.
• Home moral teaching has been undermined by school systems dispensing condoms, asking inappropriate questions of 6^th graders, otherwise promoting sex and drug use to high school students, and facilitating abortion services for adolescents without the knowledge of their parents. 
• The present financial crisis was started in part by mortgage lenders being required by government to provide loans to individuals that could not otherwise qualify for them. Part of the government’s response was to seize corporations away from the stockholders who owned them.
• Obama’s proposed national health care system would result in the patients needing the most care, the elderly, actually being denied it.  Treatment refusal would be based on a cost-benefit ratio.  End of Life counseling and hospice care would then figure prominently in this plan.
• The Supreme Court’s Kelo decision has permitted government to seize private property not for “public use” as the Framer’s clearly stated, but for “public purpose,” which would include being to collect higher taxes from the next owner.

Other direct universal health care issues are also in play, such as attempts by government to dictate what we eat and drink and the kind of private activities in which we participate. 

There have been some discussions and presentments in Washington that would declare mere public protest of government activities a “terrorist act.”

A Strategy to Take Back America

If the Left has been winning many of these political fights, they do so simply because they have consistently held to the long view.  If one examines the leading socialists of the early 20^th Century, it is amazing to see how their positions are closely aligned to modern day socialists.  To an extent arguments may be packaged differently, but nearly always the goal is the same.

Conservatives must also hold to the long view and there they will find their strengths in the Enlightenment.  The nature of tyrants has not changed and never will.

To drive the socialist radicals back in defeat, conservatives need only employ the founding documents of our nation: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

A good example would be the present attempt to create a national health care system.  Nowhere in the Constitution authorizes such a bureaucracy or intrusion in the citizen’s private life.  The “general welfare” did not and does not now suddenly mean “individual welfare.”

Conservatives have erred in ever allowing such programs to begin, much less continue.  As we can see now, a Constitutional crisis should have been created over them and every available means to stop these transgressions should have been deployed at the first attempt to initiate them.

• The 3^rd Amendment guarantees to the citizen that the troop reference aside, his or her home will not be forcibly invaded by individuals designated by the government.  This amendment should be cited in pushing for our rights to decide what kind of home our communities will be.
• The 9^th Amendment guarantees to the citizen other rights not enumerated by the Constitution.  This amendment should be cited in pushing for the recognition of rights not enumerated to the Federal or retained by the state governments.
• The 10^th Amendment limits the powers of the Federal Government to those enumerated in the Constitution.  All other rights are retained by the state governments or the individual citizen.  Demands must be made for this amendment to be honored by the government or every means possible will be deployed to make that honor a reality.

The Fourteenth Amendment

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.- Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Unites States Constitution.

Contrary to popular belief, the 14^th Amendment does not automatically confer citizenship onto any individual born on U.S. soil. The individual must also be subject to the jurisdiction (of the United States) thereof.

The decision from United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) actually leaves the door open to “subject of jurisdiction.”  The court ruled that children born in the United States to non citizens who had taken up permanent domicile and conducted business here and were otherwise not ambassadors, are citizens.

Children of illegal aliens should not automatically be citizens because:

• Aliens in the United States illegally cannot be considered permanently domiciled because their unlawful status makes them subject to deportation.  Therefore, the children of illegals would not meet the standard set by the 14^th Amendment for citizenship.
• Some countries confer citizenship by lineage- If one or both parents are citizens then so is the offspring regardless of where the birth took place.  This makes some aliens also subject to a foreign power.

Mexico has not only made any Mexican a citizen of Mexico, more than one Mexican president has stated that Mexico is anywhere Mexicans exist.  To reinforce this fact, the Mexican political party, PAN held its convention in Los Angles in 2007.  Imagine the DNC holding its convention in Buenos Aires.

Mexicans then are particularly suspect in holding filial loyalty to the United States and the offspring of Mexicans illegally present in the United States should be particularly suspect.

Politicians which choose to ignore the clear prohibitions of the United States Constitution should be called out and made subject to ridicule and removal from office at the polls. 

Conservatives should work toward the repeal of the 17^th Amendment to return the election of senators back to the states as the Framers originally dictated.  The balance of power between the states and centralized federal government was upset by removing direct state government representation in congress.

Conservatives should work toward the repeal of the 16^th Amendment ending the Federal Government's power to directly tax individuals until they are destroyed.

Any attempt to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College must be stopped.  The United States is a Republic not a Democracy as so many people today have been taught. Socialist dogma states that democracy is the direct path to socialism and socialism is a necessary intermediary step to communism.  A directly elected president would have no safeguards against interlopers and charlatans. Preserving the Electoral College prevents the dangers of majority rule, whereby, ill-informed or misled citizens could vote to install leadership that could damage the country.

Barack Obama should be compelled to release his birth certificate, adoption, school, and other records relevant to proving that he is a natural born citizen.  Pressure for this should never let up because as his depredations become more and more unpopular, at some point the truth will be known.  A system to vet the citizenship of all Federal candidates must be established as soon as possible.

Socialist elites beware, it is the middle class that historically launches revolutions and once the American middle class realize that they are having their rights and property taken from them- and their eyes are becoming wide to that right now- they will rebel and do so with great power.

The book of days will not be about the end of America; it will be about the end of socialism in America.

More Information:

The American Form of Government

Citizen's Guide to Open Government

Additional Information:

About the Authors.....

Perry Hicks is the senior writer and Washington correspondent for GCN. He is a former Mississippi Coast resident and was a correspondent for the old Gulfport Star Journal. He has appeared on Fox News Channel. Perry has also hosted his own radio talk show on the auto industry with a mix of politics. Perry is a frequent contributor to GCN writing on stories of national importance with local interests. His articles can be found in the GCN Archive.

Contact the Author: arielsquarefour@hotmail.com

Keith Burton is Owner and Editor of GulfCoastNews.com