Freedom: It's the Law, Part 1

Freedom: It's the Law™
Let's regain our freedom by restoring the Bill of Rights

(Read:  Part 1  Part 2)

As we approach July 4, 2005, Independence Day, a date of great significance to libertarian-Americans, we need a fresh, bold program to reestablish political liberty in this country.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

— Thomas Jefferson(1)

The biggest telltale of our loss of fundamental liberties is the longstanding war on drugs.  That officially corrupt and venal megasystem of prohibition and punishment has resulted in an outrageous loss of life, liberty, and property of millions of Americans.  Collateral damage—exclusive of drive-by shootings of children, gang warfare destroying neighborhoods, police predation—amounts to $500 billion annually.(2)

As a consequence of this hysteria-driven war on consensual behavior: jails overflow, true crimes of murder, theft, and assault surge, and city morgues stack corpses to the ceilings.  Yet you can count on one hand the number of public officials who decry the drug war.  As a telltale sign of loss of liberty, the drug war draws little formal attention.

An ultimate absurdity—perhaps the last straw?—has come lately with a nationwide campaign (financed by money stolen from you and me) to force people to buckle up, to use their seatbelts while driving.  "Click it or ticket" ads abound on national TV, with beefheaded, moralistic state cops stopping and pummeling motorists with large fines for the "crime" of not wearing a seatbelt.  "Wear your seatbelt: it's the law."

And I haven't begun to catalog the vast numbers of other rules inflicted on the public "for your own good," much less describe the vast wealth the state expropriates from honest, working people.  As with the seatbelt campaign, the state takes most of this money for the expressed purpose of destroying your freedom.  Don't forget the Patriot Act, which the federales use to arbitrarily imprison, torture, and kill people they don't like.

When does it stop?  When anyone who questions authority is sent to jail for sedition?  That will be too late, my friends.  And you will be in jail only days after I will.  No, what we need (and what has been put into play with the Rational Review political program [RR]) is a two-by-four upside the statists' heads.  Nonaggressively, for sure... just to get their attention.

The foundation of the RR program and what we're advocating here, as well, is activation, animation, or "enforcement" of the fundamental charter of our political system, the one that explicitly recognizes the gamut of our civil freedoms, the Bill of Rights (BofR).(3)

During the debates in state legislatures on whether to adopt the Constitution, opponents argued that the document as initially proposed would enable central-government tyranny.  The people had just fought a war against English tyranny, forces that violated their civil rights routinely.  Thus, most insisted on a "bill of rights" to broadly secure civilian freedoms and impose strict, severe restrictions on government power.  The concept of individual rights was fully developed in the early colonies, as strongly opposed to "tyranny of the majority" as to despotism of a king.

These ten amendments are set forth below with some elaboration of what they mean today.

As you can tell, the wording of BofR is plain language.  Everyone can understand it, including Supreme Court judges.  It enshrines the nonaggression principle as the central part of our heritage.  The amendments were also part of the constitutions of most of the state legislatures of the day; more recently the BofR has come to be federalized, that is applicable to state as well as federal jurisdictions.

We intend to hold all public officials to the letter of American fundamental law.  The BofR project, according to the Rational Review political program enacts the following:

1. Repudiation, repeal, and end to enforcement of any law that conflicts with the BofR.(5)
2. Trial by jury of anyone who attempts to create or enforce a law that conflicts with the BofR; upon conviction, punish miscreants according to USC Title 18, sections 241 and 242.
3. Resist popularly all laws that conflict with the BofR, in accordance with the Zero Aggression Principle.
4. Establish new zero-aggression government assuming existing government(s) fail to abide by the BofR or act to suppress liberties further.
5. Implement such voluntary polity through the libertarian movement and protect these new institutions of free men by all nonaggressive means necessary.

In addition to the program outline in the Rational Review site, a Bill of Rights Enforcement page has been composed by renowned libertarian author L. Neil Smith that eloquently argues the project.  Make no mistake about it, we're going up against an empire that puts Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith to shame.  Let's share the love and make it happen.

We at Reason to Freedom have derived some additional specific ideas to establish the BofR and hasten the day of our liberation.  The central concept among these is to form an integrated network of free American citizens' associations that monitor and record public-official behavior vis a vis the BofR and recommend appropriate response for infractions.

By organizing along lines of existing political subdivisions, the associations can readily be transformed into free citizens' representative governments.  This may be necessary if existing criminal governments fail to reform themselves according to their Constitutional charter.

Remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse!

Continued in Part 2

Read:  Part 1  Part 2