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There are several important facets of this law. One is that force is contradistinguished from violence; both are separately prohibited. Thus, within the United States Code, force does not equal violence. What, then, is force? Some of the meanings of force are:
These meanings don't seem like the sorts of things that ought to be a crime. Yet other meanings of the word, such as those that deal with force as a concept in physics, mechanics, or baseball, are inapplicable. Still other meanings, in both the American Heritage Dictionary and in Black's Law Dictionary, define force in terms of violence. These meanings aren't the intended meanings in the United States Code. Otherwise force would not have been contradistinguished from violence by being separately prohibited. Still other meanings of force are given in terms of coercion. Yet if this narrow interpretation was intended, then coercion specifically and not force generally would be prohibited. Furthermore, Bouvier's Law Dictionary instructs us that in a law or contract words must be taken, if possible, in their comprehensive and common sense. Some of the meanings previously shown might, therefore, be punishable under the cited sections of the U.S. Code. This unlikely assertion is supported by the current behavior of the U.S. government. A Moslem cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, is presently being prosecuted under the seditious conspiracy law for "providing instruction and advice" to people allegedly associated with the World Trade Center bombing.1 He is not, himself, charged with actual violence. You live in a country where "intellectual power" or "influential action" might be punishable if the authorities don't like the proposed results or the crowd with which you associate.
A constitutional convention certainly suggests the intention of doing away with the existing government and is an example of forceful and concerted action. Such a convention could easily be maligned by the authorities as an attempt to overthrow the government. Delegates could then be punished. Even an attempt to amend a state constitution2 could be punishable. I advocate the termination of the U.S. government and the erection of new government under a new constitution that I have written.3 Force of one kind or another will be necessary. Notice: I knowingly and willfully advocate, advise, and teach the desirability and propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States. It is my intention to cause its overthrow or destruction. For that purpose, I print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, or distribute printed matter which advocates, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States. Warning: If you circulate, sell, distribute, or publicly display this newsletter, or organize, help to organize, or attempt to organize any society, group, or assembly of people to study or support the objectives of this newsletter, or if you are or become a member of or affiliate with any such society, group, or assembly of people, you may be at risk.
A government should be tolerant of any change the people care to discuss. If it's a crime to merely advocate the overthrow of a government, then that government deserves to be overthrown. In the U.S.A. today, the freedoms of assembly, association, and speech are conditional before an arrogant presumption of inviolable government. You're not permitted to oppose the government, but only to plead or struggle for a bigger share of its largess. People don't usually acknowledge this kind of problem until the Gestapo kicks down their door. By then it's to late. This isn't a game. Today, the U.S. Gestapo is kicking down doors all over the country.4 When liberty is in peril, the only way to save it is the hard way, and you have a decision to make. You can submit to the masters or you can oppose them. Either way, debate is now under the whip and the ballot has yielded to the bullet.
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Black Helicopter Gun-Ships
This is an excerpt from a fund-raising letter written by Vincent Miller of the International Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, California 94102. A new wave of outrages by the government against peaceful citizens has convinced me to pull no punches in this letter. One was a recent ABC Television News report showing a fleet of black helicopter gun-ships flying over Indiana, manned by DEA agents and active duty army troops. They were looking for marijuana plants. Anyone found near them -- and they grow wild in much of the US -- was arrested, even if they had no connection to the plants. The ABC report was one of the first public admissions that the government is using our own military forces -- not against foreign enemies -- but against ordinary US citizens, like you and me. The military assault against US civilians in Indiana is not an isolated incident. Navy Seals and Army Rangers are now regularly used in drug raids throughout the country. In September, the National Guard permanently stationed troops at 56 housing projects in Puerto Rico. In Anchorage, Alaska last summer, machine gun-armed National Guard troops accompanied state police on door-to-door, warrantless gun sweeps. According to ABC News, in 1995 the Pentagon will spend $15 billion for troops, helicopter gun-ships, and weapons to use against American citizens. For the first time since the Civil War, large numbers of military troops are being used as an elite, internal police force. All of us are at risk .... Under the new anti-crime law, HR-3355, President Clinton can send in BATF, DEA and FBI agents with military support to take over any "State or part of a State" he unilaterally declares a "violent crime or drug emergency area." Once sent in, these agents can confiscate anyone's home, car or business, based solely upon their suspicion of the most minor illegal activity. You can forget about trials or hearings. None are required to confiscate your property or hold you without trial for up to six months. And the new confiscation squads have every incentive to steal as much as possible. Section 180102 of the crime law says they can keep what they seize for their "agency." There is no outside oversight. If you think this could never happen in America, think again. It's already happening hundreds of times a day. One friend of mine was driving his cleaning lady back from a bus stop in San Diego when he was stopped at a police roadblock. Because she looked Hispanic, the INS claimed she could be an illegal alien. They confiscated my friend's car on the spot. He never got so much as a hearing, and the INS kept his car. Another acquaintance, Midge Durling, lives about 20 miles away in Petaluma, California. Based upon alleged illegal activity of her mother, police seized Midge's home, and the homes of her two adult children living in a different state. Midge didn't live with her mother or know anything about her alleged illegal activity. The police didn't care. A vague suspicion was all they needed to seize everything Midge and her adult children owned, without trial. Your danger of becoming a confiscation victim is about to go up 100-fold. The BATF-DEA-FBI confiscation squads called for by the new crime law are now being trained at our military bases. The government says they're being trained in "urban pacification." I call it wholesale looting .... Why haven't you heard more about use of the military against US citizens, police confiscations, and other government outrages? A major reason is the cowardly silence of our increasingly government-managed news media. Government news management was blatantly apparent during the Gulf War and the invasion of Panama. Reporters were herded into tightly-controlled press pools. The only news they were allowed to report came from official Pentagon press releases and carefully-orchestrated news conferences. Disturbing pictures, like scenes of injured American soldiers or dead Iraqi civilians, were banned. Reporters regarded as unsympathetic to the military were simply excluded. The few correspondents for the Washington Post, ABC, and other news services that tried to break away from the managed press pools were harassed, delayed, detained, or arrested. Their cameras were seized, often "accidentally" broken. CNN's Peter Arnett was actually threatened with prosecution for treason for broadcasting pictures of Iraqi residential areas hit by not-so-smart bombs. Then came Waco. Machine gun-armed BATF agents told reporters that if they tried to get any closer than two miles from the Branch Davidian compound, they would face "tragic consequences." Reporters in Waco quickly learned to ask only the right questions. When one reporter asked, "Is this the beginning of martial law in America?," he was immediately arrested and dragged off to jail. (No, this wasn't Moscow or Beijing -- it was the U.S. of A.) And what was the FBI's justification for besieging the Branch Davidians, then shooting and gassing 96 innocent men, women, and children? Their public answer was "suspected firearms violations." That was a conscious lie. Those charges had already been investigated and rejected by Texas courts. But when Janet Reno promised many more such operations in the near future, she wasn't lying about that. They've already begun. Last spring and summer, door-to-door gun sweeps without search warrants were conducted in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Anchorage, and other cities. In Chicago, under Operation Clean Sweep, police raided hundreds of low-income apartments. Any guns they found -- legal or illegal -- were seized. Gun owners were arrested as suspected drug dealers or gang members. The government seems to be saying that if you have anything to do with guns, you must be a criminal .... Mao Tse-tung said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Like it or not, he was right. If we want to stay out of chains, we'd better stay well armed. — Sam
Buck Hunter Shoots Off His Mouth Dear Buck My boyfriend says he has the ear of a skilled musician. How can I be sure? — Want to Believe Him
Dear Want to Believe Him
Ask the musician.
I can think of something that isn't in the Yellow Pages: the zip codes. — Frontiersman
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Social
Contract: The Series
Part 1: The Long and Winding Doctrine by Sam Aurelius Milam III Rulers have claimed a variety of justifications for their authority. Some have claimed it as a matter of Divine Right. Some have professed an inherent superiority over their subjects, and a consequent authority. Others have suggested that leadership is a duty, done for the good of those from whom they exacted obedience. In recent centuries, rulers have begun to claim that their powers are given willingly by the people, and that they rule in the people's name. This claim is based on the idea that all political power derives from the people, and that governments exercise only powers delegated to them by the people. Men have been struggling toward an understanding of this doctrine for quite some time. Over 2200 years ago, Aristotle observed in Politics, (Book 3, Chapter 14) that "... kings rule according to law over voluntary subjects, but tyrants over involuntary; and the one are guarded by their fellow-citizens, the others are guarded against them." The 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) gave considerable thought to the doctrine.
Hobbes made in his statement of the doctrine an arbitrary and incorrect distinction between "the strong" and "the sovereign." Indeed, the sovereign in Hobbes' philosophy was nothing more than the most successful of the strong. Hobbes believed government to have originated by the voluntary actions of men, but viewed opposition to government as treason.
Since the contract according to Hobbes was irrevocable, those men who entered into it gained nothing. They remained weak, and under the domination of the strong. What they lost was their right to oppose the strong. The authors of the Mayflower Compact (1620) appear to have considered King James to have been unconditionally sovereign.
A different view was expressed by John Locke (1632-1704), in the latter part of the 17th century. Locke advocated not only that governments operated with powers that were voluntarily delegated, but that government could exercise only those powers. He advocated the sovereignty of the people.
Locke also believed that the rights of men were superior to the powers of government, and that opposition to government was a right of the people.
Thus, Locke's view was that government is a tool of the people, to be used or discarded by the them as they choose. In the Declaration of Rights of 1774, the American colonists implied that the sovereignty of a king was predicated upon powers ceded to him by the people.
They still didn't properly understand the concept, for if a king is sovereign, then he doesn't rely upon delegated powers. On the other hand, if the people are sovereign, then they do not cede powers to a sovereign king, but to an agent of the people whose job it is to carry out their will. Less than two years later, the writers of the Declaration of Independence made a better statement of the doctrine.
These writers understood the confrontation between the rights of the people and the powers of government. One remark particularly reveals their views regarding the Doctrine of Social Contract. This is with regard to the legislative power.
This is a clear statement of the opinion that the powers of government, when terminated, revert to their origins, that is, to the people. After the Declaration of Independence, the clear vision of sovereign people was lost. Sovereignty was assigned to the states in the Articles of Confederation.
In the U.S. Constitution, sovereignty was denied even to the states.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution drove the final nail into the coffin of the sovereignty of the people.
To be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States means to be under its authority and control.
Since the formation of the U.S. government, the people have had no sovereignty. Instead, sovereignty has been exclusively a tool of central governments. For over two hundred years, the Doctrine of Social Contract has been obstructed by the very authority it was intended to prevent. Next Month — Part 2: Taking Stock |
If you don't want to keep receiving this newsletter, print RETURN TO SENDER above your name and address, cross out your name and address, and return the newsletter. When I receive it, I'll terminate your subscription. Back issues or extra copies of this newsletter are available upon request. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this newsletter in its entirety or to reproduce material from it, provided that the reproduction is accurate and that proper credit is given. Please note that I do not have the authority to give permission to reprint material that I have reprinted from other publications. For that permission, you must go to the original source. I would appreciate receiving a courtesy copy of any document or publication in which you reprint my material. I solicit letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them. Short items are more likely to be printed. I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words, but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece. I give credit for all items printed unless the author specifies otherwise. This newsletter isn't for sale. If you care to make a voluntary contribution, you may do so. The continued existence of the newsletter will depend, in part, on such contributions. I accept cash and postage stamps. I don't accept checks, money orders, anything that will smell bad by the time it arrives, or anything that requires me to provide ID or a signature to receive it. In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc. I'm sure you get the idea. Dear Frontiersman I am writing to express some misgivings about the general tone and thrust of this newsletter. It seems to me that the Frontiersman spends a lot of time denouncing the government, but gives few clues as to how we should go about improving things. Your super-militant tone suggests that you favor violent revolution. Even if a violent revolution could be morally justified, I think that such a course of action would be doomed to complete failure at this time -- Not only because the government has tremendous firepower, but because the majority of U.S. citizens seem to want safety and comfort more than freedom. Also, history shows that violence begets violence -- a revolution would probably result in the imposition of a new, equally dictatorial government. If, as I believe, violent revolution is an impractical solution, what other means do you suggest for improving things? If you have no other ideas, then it seems to me that the Frontiersman is at best a waste of time, and at worst an unwitting agent provocateur. — Don; San Jose, California
— Sam
Dear Frontiersman Thank you for sending me your February issue. I found it interesting and would like to see your previous issues. I appreciate your willingness to risk the expense of sending your publication to strangers without any guarantee of compensation in return. These days it seems that most people expect others to pay for their products sight unseen; and most products sold on that basis turn out to be of very little value. Best of luck in all your endeavors. — Stephen; Fremont, California
— Sam
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