If individual rights are not sacred and preserved by common
agreement, no part of society is safe from sacrifice on the altars of governing
expediency and social benefit.
We fought a long war of revolution against our established government
from the 1770's through the early 1800's. The war was waged and won with
large amounts of whiskey and gunpowder. These traditional assets have been
consigned by the new Federal Government to the waste heap of prohibition.
The shot that symbolized the start of the shooting war for liberty was
fired at Lexington during the resistance of our early patriots to the attempt
by the government to seize their arms and ammunition armory at Concord.
From its inception, the federal government has been prohibited from
infringing upon our inherent right to own and carry arms. "Arms" are weapons,
and especially military weapons. Arms include all manner of articles and
devices, such as pointed, edged and blunt weapons, explosive, manual and
automated weapons and other weapons as yet undescribed and uninvented.
Arms include among an unlimited array of technologies and aptitudes, weapons
of large and violent capacity, bombs, crew-served, flying, burrowing and
crawling instruments of death and destruction. The keeping and bearing
of arms practiced at the period of our revolution serves as the guarantor
of civility among free individuals as well as civility and obedience between
the People and their public servants.
The function of personal arms beyond the preservation of life, liberty
and property is to deter suppression of ideas and the gathering of people
to hear, consider and act upon ideas. Ideas are often be contrary to the
preservation of government interests as may exist at a given point in time.
Naturally, the gathering of men and women and the ideas developed at these
conversations will never be condoned by government in the absence of a
right and the effective ability of individuals to defend their meeting
and speaking. Arms are a necessary and desirable element of self-determination
and self-government.
The key to understanding the purpose of the first and second amendments
of our federal constitution is to understand the principle uniqueness of
governing in the united States. In our country, and nowhere else among
the countries of the world, the People are the true sovereign and government.
We are governed, yes... but we are our own governors, choosing from
among ourselves the men and women to whom we grant the privilege to serve
our common necessary purpose. Our intention is that once the dreary business
of governing is delegated temporarily to those we trust, we may devote
our own time on this earth to our private activities and individual pursuit
of happiness. The sole function for which we animate our representatives
is to preserve our inherent personal rights and liberty from our enemies,
both foreign and domestic.
In this fundamental sense, having taken our liberty and banished our
government, we created our institutions and processes for governing ourselves
and we alone, not our representatives, have the right to alter, abolish
or replace those processes and institutions. Our representatives and institutions
lack any authority to act as the sovereign, except in representing us in
the commerce of nations.
Over the years, our Presidents, Congress, Judiciary and States have
found this basic relationship of sovereignty, people and government to
be inconvenient until now, after casting off our former government, we
find ourselves again under the iron hand of tyranny. Subjugation to modern
American tyranny remains relatively and momentarily voluntary, but we can
feel the hot breath of unrestrained totalitarianism on our collars. Only
the foolish and imprudent will stand silently and allow continued progression
to an irreversible state of submission and subjection.
At our War Between the States, the prevalent understanding before Lincoln's
presidency was that states were sovereign and secession was a viable political
right. Lincoln eliminated the concept of state sovereignty by invading,
conquering and occupying the states of the Confederacy. Lincoln then re-incorporated
the states of the Confederacy under a state of Reconstruction and military
rule. During this process, Lincoln unconstitutionally created an entirely
new state and had state representatives removed from the Congress who would
not agree to legislation for his ambition of a new Federal Nation.
A fair argument can be made that the constitutional union of "the United
States of America" (a plural proper noun) expired at that period and was
replaced by a new Nation, called the "United States", (a singular proper
noun). Neither succeeding presidents nor Congress have deemed it necessary
to repeal the anti-constitutional legislation known as the Reconstruction
Acts, establishing military rule in the states. These acts remain valid
and in effect today.
Over the following years and administrations, the Federal Government
has replaced the Constitutional division of federal authority with parallel
Federal institutions, substituting Federal Municipal Fiat for constitutional
authority. The reasoning is effective, however faulty in law. The Federal
Government as we know it today, was created piecemeal as successive Congresses,
Presidents and Courts abandoned the delegated powers and limitations of
the federal constitution, exchanging limited enumerated powers for presumption
of unlimited municipal powers over the District of Columbia and other
federal Places purchased for "needful buildings" and other enumerated purposes.
The Congress and President claim with Federal Court confirmation,
that the Constitution has no controlling effect within federal municipal
powers expressed under Article I, Section 7, Clause 17. Their claim is
that the Federal government rules there and it exercises exclusive sovereign
authority with unlimited powers. What Congress, the President or the Courts
order, is the law of the Municipal Federal enclave. While the claim of
the reconstructed Federal Government may be excused as misunderstanding
or expedience of institutionalized bureaucracy, the excuses must end at
that point.
What came next may easily be termed treason. The Federal government,
via the institutional bureaucracy, at the instigation of a succession of
presidents, the acquiescence of the Congress and the complicity of the
federal courts, extended the presumption of Federal Supreme Sovereignty
to the States. Although initially slow to adopt this revolutionary and
treacherous scheme, the state institutions and representatives joined the
Federal Government to create what we now mistakenly consider to be the
new "United States". The replacement of the constitutional republican union
by the Federal National Government is not fully accomplished, but has achieved
a national quality and effect. Many of our society prefer the Nationalization
of our country's governing processes. A few find the conversion unwelcome.
These Sheriffhenry Essays explore the processes, effects and consequences
of the ongoing revolution against constitutional government by treasonous
representatives and ambitious institutions.
In these essays, I allude to "We the People", state constitutions, the
federal constitution, the Federal US government and the State governments.
The common theme of my essays is to explain these terms and why they are
critical to understanding individual loss of self-determination and governing
sovereignty in our country. The goal suggested by these essays is the recovery
of our individual liberty and inherent sovereignty.
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