"Posse Comitatus Won't
Save You From the U. S. Military"
from "In Defense of Rural
America"
By Ron
Ewart, President
National Association of Rural
Landowners
and
nationally recognized author and speaker on freedom and property rights
issues.
© Copyright Sunday, April
19, 2015 - All Rights Reserved
As published on
Newswithviews, April 15, 2015
This article is also
available on our website at:
If a person, group of
people, or a government has power over you, that means they can control what you
do, or force you to do what you don't want to do. That power comes either
by the force of law with corresponding punishments for not obeying the law, or
by force of violence using the gun or other weapons that can threaten or take
your life, or rob you of your liberty.
In many of our articles over the last
10 years, we have written about the growing power of the American government, at
all levels, but mostly at the federal level. No matter what anyone thinks,
the evidence points directly at a trend towards absolute power. That is
what governments do over time. But the only way to project absolute power
is by force and that force comes in the form of civilian or military power where
that power can incarcerate you, or kill you …... for any reason!
The Founders went to great lengths to
set up a government system that was based on the rule of law, not rule by
force. Overtime, as laws proliferated into millions of laws piled on top
of one another, enforcement of all those laws became problematic. As more
people broke the laws, many without knowing it, government's response was to
increase enforcement.
In a previous article on
laws we wrote: "Every Time A New Law Is
Written
"
"By just sheer numbers,
the more laws that are written, the less likely the entire population will even
know about the laws, or understand them, or know of their consequences or
penalties for violation, much less be in compliance with them. The
consequence of too many laws is that huge segments of the public are totally
unaware of their existence. And yet, under the law, ignorance of the law is not
a defense. Then, when the hapless individual comes face-to-face with the
law, it results in anger and frustration for that individual and a spiraling
degradation of freedom and liberty for all of us."
"Many laws are written at
the insistence of lobbying or special interest groups with very narrow and
purposely hidden agendas. The public never has an opportunity for real
input and society as a whole is not benefited. Partisan politics often
compromises a new law into meaningless, often conflicting legislation, leaving
loopholes over which lawyers can argue over for
decades."
"In the final
analysis, extending legislating and law creation to its absurdity, one arrives
at a point where there are so many laws that no one is in compliance and we end
up losing our ability to enforce any of them. We become in fact, lawless
by the very chaos that the policy makers have
created."
UNLESS THE CENTRAL
GOVERNMENT
SENDS IN FEDERAL
TROOPS!
What this all boils down to is that the more
laws there are and the more people there are to be controlled by those laws, the
greater the need of enforcement by guns. It is clear that government will
never allow the people TO BECOME LAWLESS. After all, government's role is
to keep the peace and restore order no matter how many liberties the people have
to give up.
As the federal government grew larger and more
powerful, it became the logical repository for the military power needed to
control all those millions of people to make sure they comply with all the
millions of laws that the people know nothing about. They must keep order
and control at all costs. But it must be remembered that local law enforcement
is trained to use minimal force, where the U. S. Military is trained to use
maximum, overwhelming force. That is the undeniable difference and a
direct threat to individual liberty.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (Pub. L. 18
USC P 1385) was supposed to keep the U. S. Military from enforcing local and
federal law, or assisting local law enforcement in that duty. Well before
the Posse Comitatus Act was passed, Congress passed the Insurrection Act of 1807
(Pub. L. 10 USC 331 thru 335) which was a "set of laws that
govern the ability of the President to deploy U. S. troops on American
soil." Such deployment could only
come at the request of a governor of the state in which an event was taking
place requiring a larger military force. This all changed after Hurricane
Katrina where the Louisiana governor did not request federal troops to restore
order. Congress went ahead and modified the Insurrection Act as
follows:
"Section 1076 of the law changed Sec.
333 of the 'Insurrection Act,' and widened the President's ability to deploy
troops within the United States to enforce the laws. Under this act, the
President may also deploy troops as a police force during a natural disaster,
epidemic, serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or other condition,
when the President determines that the authorities of the state are incapable of
maintaining public order. The bill also modified Sec. 334 of the
Insurrection Act, giving the President authority to order the dispersal of
either insurgents or 'those obstructing the enforcement of the laws.' The
law changed the name of the chapter from 'Insurrection' to 'Enforcement of the
Laws to Restore Public Order.'"
But ladies and gentlemen, it gets far worse
from there. The Department of Defense (DOD) has inserted itself into the
use of U. S. Military force on American soil and enforcing local law and
assisting local law enforcement. In our research we ran across a 2004 DOD
document (republished in 2009) that spells out in
detail that Posse Comitatus is dead and the Insurrection Act must be
expanded. Here are excerpts from that document.
Legal Authority to Use Federal Troops to Enforce the
Law"
"The Insurrection Act is the most important
legal authority for the President to authorize the use of federal troops to
enforce the law. The Insurrection Act
(there is really no single 'Insurrection Act' per se but this
name has been applied collectively to the four statutes noted
below) consists of four statutes enacted at
different times for different reasons that, when considered as a whole, provide
the power that Presidents have used many times as the legal basis for using
troops to enforce the law. The four sections of the act are as
follows:"
· Title 10, Section 331 was enacted in 1792 in response to challenges
to the taxing power of the federal government. It allows the President, at the
request of a governor or state legislature, to put down an insurrection by
calling into federal service sufficient militia to "suppress the insurrection."
· Title 10, Section 332 was enacted in 1861 at the outset of the Civil
War. It allows the President to use the armed forces to enforce the laws or
suppress a rebellion whenever, in his opinion, unlawful obstructions,
combinations, or assemblages or rebellion against the authority of the United
States make it impractical to enforce the laws using the course of judicial
proceedings.
· Title 10, Section 333 was enacted in 1869 during the Reconstruction
Era. It allows the President to use the armed forces or militia to respond to
insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracies that
prevent a state government from enforcing the laws.
· Title 10, Section 334 was enacted in 1861. It prescribes that the
President shall issue a proclamation calling on insurgents to disperse before
using the militia or armed forces to enforce the law.
"The Insurrection Act is the most sweeping
authority for the President to authorize and order the use of the federal troops
for domestic operations. The President may not act on warning or even at
the start of an incident, but must wait until the governor or a state
legislature asks for federal assistance. This tends to discourage advance
preparations and movements of troops-although Presidents have authorized
such actions. This tiered approach in which the federal government acts
only after local and state governments have failed, was workable when the cost
of delayed response was acceptable, but it is inappropriate for the current
situation."
This should scare the pants off
you!
The older Insurrection Act and the revisions
thereto, have all but repealed Posse Comitatus. The President can do what
he wishes, anytime he wants with federal troops. That is an awesome power.
We have placed links to the evolution of the
"Insurrection Act" and the entire above DOD document on our website for your
review at this link: http://www.narlo.org/
Why do you suppose that the U. S. Military has
been conducting massive training operations throughout the U. S., like operation
Jade Helm 15 as depicted in the above image?
(Jade Helm 15 link: http://rt.com/usa/244969-
It isn't all training for warfare elsewhere on
the planet. It is in fact training to put down insurrection by disgruntled
Americans and to maintain civil order when local law enforcement can't do the
job, pursuant to the detailed outline in the above referenced DOD
document.
It is no coincidence that the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) has put out lists of potential domestic terrorists that
include Christian groups, militias, patriots and returning military vets.
They know what is in your mind and what you may be planning and they are
planning ahead for that eventuality. It is no accident that the U. S.
Military is conducting huge, multi-state training operations, or building FEMA
camps for massive internment.
The Progressives have been in virtual control
of America for over 100 years. They intend to remain in control, even if
they can't do it by votes. They have taken over the schools, academia,
government institutions, the news media and they will maintain their control by
force of arms if patriots (conservatives) even so
much as hint at challenging their authority. It's been coming for a long
time. It is the final evolution of a liberal, socialist, ideologically
driven dictatorship.
For those in our reading audience who think
that a group of armed militia can stand up against the full force and fury of
the U. S. Military, they had better think again. If we are going
to change the course that America is now on, it will have to be by peaceful
means.
The only way insurrection or uprising by
Americans can win against the U. S. Military is the organization of millions of
armed citizens with seasoned leadership, command and control and extensive
training, who will put everything on the line to challenge the final
militarization of America by federal forces. And they had better hope that
the federal troops don't shoot to kill, because those federal forces are also
made up of Americans. If civilian Americans are pitted against
federal troop Americans in a shooting war, the U. S. Constitution will be
annulled and martial law will be declared. We can almost guarantee that
what comes out of that shooting war between Americans and Americans will not be
a Constitutional Republic.
We are just as disturbed by Operation Jade
Helm 15 as are many other Americans. Consequently, we have filed a formal
FOIA request with the Department of Defense, asking some very specific questions
about this operation and demanding specific documents. You will find a
link to a PDF version of our FOIA request on our website at this link:
http://www.narlo.org/
Please understand that this FOIA
request could put a target on our back and put us at considerable risk for
having the audacity to challenge them personally. They are already
monitoring us and have been for several years. We know just by observing
the statistics on our website.
Why do we do this ladies and
gentlemen? Because we strongly believe in preserving, protecting and
defending the Constitution of the United States and the individual liberty it
secures. It could be considered treason that our president and all other
public office holders and bureaucrats don't do the same. It is a travesty
that millions of Americans won't join us, or others, in this effort. Their
silence could be America's undoing.
- - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
NOTE: The
foregoing article represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily
shared by the owners, representatives, employees, or agents of the
publisher.
Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and
speaker on freedom and property rights issues and author of this weekly column,
"In Defense of Rural America", is the president of the National
Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org), an advocate and consultant for
urban and rural landowners and a non-profit corporation headquartered in
Washington State. He can be reached for comment at: info@narlo.org.
.
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