S. Jones
]]>Baruch Kimmerling: Benny Morris' Shocking Interview
If Americans Knew: History of the Palestine-Israel Conflict
Avi Shlaim: How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
(Ain't that right, Joshua?)
S. Jones
]]>S. Jones
]]>Remember, remember, the fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Ol' Jones wuz ohn th' highway last Nov. 5 'n didn't haive internet aiccess, so I thot I'd post this now.
In-iss here article, which y'all jus have t' read, th' arhtur writes,
Fear, ignorance and greed, when fueled and manipulated by propaganda reduce people’s natural immune responses to oppressive and parasitic government, allowing politicians to sap their essence and abandon the principles on which their liberty is based. This process by which government grows at the expense of liberty has been the same since the English King and his Parliament oppressed American colonialists.
He's sayin' th' same thang-att V does in the clip below:
And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
Y'all dumbass pseudocons who TO THIS DAY defend Bush, Congress 'n they goddamn "Patriot" Act: that thar author 'n V are tawkin t' you, you who now staind as th' enablers of socialists who will ohnly build ohn th' foundation y'all have laid. Damn y'all t' hell. (Ain't that right, Joshua?)
S. Jones
]]>Address of League of the South president Dr. Michael Hill at the 2009 convention.
S. Jones
]]>'N if'n-att dohn't work: secession. (Also, see my blog entry The Hollowing Out of American Federalism die-rektly below.)
S. Jones
]]>The first test of federalism’s ability to protect the people against an over-reaching national government came early on in the face of a threat of war with France during the late 1790s. The Alien and Sedition Acts were enacted in direct response to the fear of war.
Jefferson and Madison perceived the danger of these acts, not only their immediate oppressive nature but also their long-run corrosive effect on the federal system of government. Jefferson described the Acts as “merely an experiment on the American mind, to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution.” In response to this experiment in tyranny, Jefferson and Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in which they laid down the “principles of ‘98” in an effort to rouse the states to check an over-reaching national government before it became un-checkable. (Read more. . .)
The threat of an abusive national government’s over reaching its delegated powers receded temporarily as the threat of war receded, the war party of Hamilton lost power to the Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison and the Alien and Sedition Acts expired. This first test of federalism and the reaction to it in the form of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions have been downplayed in the nation’s official history yet this incident exposed the flaws in the design of American federalism and set the stage for the next attempted encroachment of national power
This second test of federalism and the concomitant expansion of the national government occurred around the fulcrum of the War Between the States. In addition to the unplanned expansion of government that invariably accompanies war, especially civil war, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party also set out intentionally to greatly strengthen and expand the power and scope of the national government through what became known as the “American System of Henry Clay,” a plan to use federal subsidies and high protectionist tariffs to establish economic nationalism and give large sums of tax dollars to corporations to build “internal improvements” – railways, waterways and canals.
As Reconstruction came to an end and throughout the remainder of the 19thcentury and into the 20th century, primarily under Republican rule, the skids to further centralization and consolidation were greased beginning in 1877 with the Supreme Court case of Munn v. Illinois. The Munn case illustrates how expansion of national power did not always appear to be such on its face. Indeed, as Munn illustrated, the predicate for the future expansion of national power could come first by a federal court ruling expanding state authority over individuals and businesses.
In fact, the most effective expansion of national authority came through a two-step process: First, expansion of overlapping powers (in this case the power to regulate commerce) followed by the national government’s claim of exclusive authority over the previously expanded common realm through the invocation of its constitutional supremacy (Supremacy Clause) in areas where state and national power intersect and conflict. Thus were states crowded from the field and hollowed out into mere shells of the authentic organs of government they previously were.
In Munn, The Supreme Court permitted states to regulate certain businesses within their borders, including railroads. This case is commonly considered a milestone in the growth of government regulation, practically eviscerating the bar against takings under state common law or the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Court’s ruling upheld Illinois price-control legislation proposed by the National Grange to regulate grain elevator rates, declaring that business interests (private property) used for public good be regulated by government. This decision also affected similar laws governing railroad rates. Since they too were deemed private utilities serving the public interest, the laws governing their rates were held to be constitutional as well.
Although both holdings were considerably narrowed and weakened by the decision in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois (also known as the Wabash Case), the predicate for further expansion of national commerce power had been firmly established. In Munn, the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment did not bar government from imposing price controls but focused instead on establishing the principle that a private company could be regulated in the public interest. The Court held that it could, if the private company could be seen as a utility operating in the public interest. . . .
The expansion of the national government’s commerce power was not without temporary obstruction and even occasional temporary reversals but it was, over the course of time, unidirectional and virtually all encompassing. Between the turn of the 20th century and the New Deal, the Supreme Court made a series of rulings that found congressional action in violation of the Tenth Amendment. Perhaps the most famous are the 1918 ruling striking down national child labor standards (Hammer v. Dagenhart, 246 U.S. 20), in which the Court embellished the Tenth Amendment to read that powers not “‘expressly’ delegated to the national government are reserved,” the 1922Child Labor Tax Case (259 U.S. 20), and United States v. Butler (297 U.S. 1, 1936).
Beginning in 1937, however, the Court reversed itself on restricting the powers of Congress under the Tenth Amendment. In cases that year, such as National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Co. (301 U.S. 1) andSteward Machine Co. v. Davis (301 U.S. 548), the Court found the Tenth Amendment to be of limited relevance in assessing the constitutionality of congressional taxing and spending policies.
Although given several opportunities between 1937 and 1976, the Court refused to strike down national legislation on the grounds that it encroached on powers reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. See e.g., New York v. United States (326 U.S. 572,1946) and Fry v. United States (421 U.S. 542, 1975). In reference to the Commerce Clause specifically, on only eight occasions prior to 1937 did the Court find that the Congress had exceeded its constitutional limits. The last such case (prior to 1976) was Carter v. Carter Coal Co. (298 U.S.238, 1936), which invalidated the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act of 1935. The Court held in that case that regulation of production and labor relations lay beyond the allowable object of congressional power—regulation of interstate commerce. The Fair Labor Standards Act was upheld in United States v. Darby (312 U.S. 100, 1941), the Court holding that Congress may by law exclude goods that do not conform to specified labor standards from interstate commerce and may use direct regulation of labor relations to achieve this objective. . . .
After World War II, federalism was replaced by “intergovernmentalism,” an unlovely term for the unlovely transformation of the sovereign states into bureaucratic extensions of the central government. It happened this way.
The national government further expanded its control over state governments through the fiscal realm by a series of “revenue-sharing” measures, beginning with specific grants-in-aid eventually including huge national entitlement programs such as Medicaid, which entice and require state fiscal participation through direct mandates and statutory fiscal matching provisions. Along with the grant of money came federal mandates on the states, which provided the national government a lever to control and direct state behavior to comport to the desires of Washington. The ultimate fiscal hold on states developed during the Cold War through the expansion of the military-industrial complex, which thoroughly entangled the economic circumstances of the states with defense contractors and the perpetuation of the national war machine.
By 1985, with the Court’s ruling in Garcia, federalism was dead, and state sovereignty was a mere constitutional echo of days past. . . .
Beginning on September 11, 2001, the expansion and consolidation of the national government took another quantitative and qualitative leap forward, this time toward World Empire. As the United States approaches the end of the first decade of the 21st century and the 220th year of the American constitutional republic, an unrestrained, largely unlimited national government routinely ignores precious individual rights once held inviolate under the U.S. Constitution, regularly tramples on states’ prerogatives, pursues total information awareness of every detail of individuals’ lives, seeks total behavior control of American citizens and asserts the right to exert its power without the sanction of a declaration of war or legal warrant into any country against any individual anytime, anyplace in the world. (Emphasis mine.)
Now, iss-here is exackly wut ol' Jones has been sayin t' miny y'all, especially you "conservatives" who thank-att th' republic can be restored simply by votin' in more Republicans. (Y'all know who ye are.) Hell, it wuz th' Republicans-att helped t' start all-iss mess. Wut does th' writer say will be needed t' restore th' America of th' Founders?
(I)t won’t be simply a matter of untying the knot or walking this cat back. It is impossible to simply retrace the steps that brought the American political system to its present perilous situation; it will require courage, steadfastness, truculence, defiance and a will of iron to stand up to Washington and stand down the power of the federal government. It will be an undertaking not in principle different from but even more daunting and difficult than the Civil Rights Movement, namely reviving America and restoring liberty by overcoming oppressive government that is acting illegally and immorally with a pointed gun under the color of law.
Iss ol' boy has th' cojones t' say (and imply) wut you "conservatives" will never say. Poleeticks as usual wohn't restore our liberty. Ohnly a fight will.
Ain't that right, Joshua?
S. Jones
]]>And here are a couple-a must-read representative articles from th' blogs owner, Russell D. Longcore:
State Secession: Trying to Beat the World's Worst Record ( = the Federal Government)
Secession: Timing Is Everything
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S. Jones
]]>Word ohn th' street is-att th' separation wuz a little more complikated thin wut's made out thar on-att RMA2 announcemint.
T' be fair, it ohnly makes sainse-att a blogger who ain't no longer in Colorader shouldn't be associated with an outfit called "Rocky Mountain Alliance." But I have predicted ohn more thin one occasion-att RMA2 wud some day give ol' Steve th' ol' heave-ho, 'n it duz really make me wonder whethur his move to WA was th' occasion fir RMA2 t' do jus that. See, 'em folk over thar at RMA2 are mostly no-account neocons and Claremonster types, 'n wut's more, cheerleaders fir th' GOP. Steve, ohn th' other haind, though he's still aictive in th' GOP ain't no cheerleader, 'n is more libertarian in his views. More like Ron Paul, t' say, 'n th' RMA2 folk have made it clear they ain't no friends of Ron Paul or those of us who support him.
Cudda been too that Steve's friendship with ol' Jones wuz part of-att kiss of death. While a few of the RMA2 bloggers are acceptin' of me, thar's a certain principal over thar at RMA2 who detests Jones 'n won't accept my commints to his blog entries. (Ain't that right, Joshua?) And Rocky Mountain Right has banned Jones ohn th' basis-att Jones is a "racist" and a "neo-Confederate." I'm a-thankin' it may have embahrassed certain folk that Steve 'n I were sumwut kindred spirits. (I say "sumwut" cuz Steve and I do haive our disagreemints.) But maybe I'm jus givin' myself too much credit. Cud be that it wuz jus Steve's libertarianism that led to th' partin' of ways. Cud be that it is jus as RMA2 has sed, that a Washington State blogger ought not be part of th' "Rocky Mountain Alliance". But I wonder why they wud give Steve the boot for this reason whin they still got a blogger thar who ain't blogged since May 2008. I wud thank-att a Western blogger with ties t' Colorader 'n who runs a really interestin' blog wud be more important t' Colorader readers thin a blogger who ain't had nuthin' t' say in almost a year 'n a haif.
Thangs att make ye go, hmmmmmmmm.
Anyway, y'all kin still read The Liberty Republican here.
S. Jones
]]>(Ain't that right, Joshua?)
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