"The Slow, Torturous,
Silent Repeal of the Bill of Rights"
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, May
10, 2015 - All Rights Reserved
As published on
Newswithviews, May 6, 2015
This article is also
available on our website at:
"The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to
'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibitour
Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be
preexisting." William J. Brennan,
Jr.
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Because of our own difficulties with
the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), we have been exchanging e-mails with a
gentleman whose battle with the IRS makes our problem seem like a pleasant walk
in the forest on a sunny day. The IRS is after him for taxes on income he
never received. They are after him for millions of dollars in taxes and
they won't let up. They just stole $45,000 from him with the court's
permission and they denied his constant requests for a trial by jury as required
by the 7th Amendment to the Constitution.
Oh, but it seems that there are
limits to the 7th Amendment when it comes to the federal government. The
government is protected by what is called "Sovereign Immunity". In
colloquial terms what this means is, "The King Can Do No
Wrong." If a
citizen wants to sue the federal government, the government has to agree to the
lawsuit, or, there has to be specific legislative intent in the statutes
allowing the government to be sued. (Lehman v Nakshian, 453 US 156)
The prevailing legal doctrine
is that "the government cannot be compelled by the courts because it is
the power of the government that created the courts in the first
place." This seriously
flawed doctrine fails to take into account that it was the people who created
the government ….. IN THE FIRST PLACE! If the people created the
government, they have created a monster and the monster is "an insatiable,
devouring, run away, gigantic black hole that can only be controlled, reduced,
or replaced by a massive uprising of the people, either peacefully, or
violently." (from a previous article)
But the 7th Amendment is not
the only Amendment under a silent, vicious attack by government. Let's
take the 8th Amendment for example, which states:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive
fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
"
Nevertheless, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) can fine a property owner as much as $75,000 PER
DAY per violation of alleged (unproven) violations of the Clean Water
Act. Anyone who says this isn't an excessive fine, that violates the 8th
Amendment, is 10 cards short of a full deck. It is definitely "cruel
and unusual." The EPA,
as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, unilaterally asserts that they have
dictatorial control over every drop of water in America, pursuant to the Clean
Water Act. Except that, there is no such legal authority. Their
legal authority only extends to "navigable" waters. It was only just recently that the U. S.
Supreme Court allowed property owners judicial review of EPA allegations.
Before, the only redress a person had against the EPA was through an EPA hearing
examiner. Can anyone say, the fox is guarding the hen house?
In addition, the IRS can penalize a
taxpayer $5,000 for not signing the perjury statement at the bottom of Form
1040, even though the taxpayer perjures him or herself every time he signs the
perjury statement. In one of our many Affidavits we sent to the IRS, in
our continuing battle with them, we listed the following as one of the
conditions before we would comply with the terms of an IRS Notice:
"Condition 13 -
Provide proof on how the AFFIANT can file an income tax
return and by some stroke of blind luck not commit perjury when the AFFIANT does
not understand all the tens of thousands of tax laws and has no way to know if
the AFFIANT’s tax return is true or correct, even if a tax professional prepared
it for the AFFIANT, therefore, the AFFIANT would be committing perjury to sign
the tax return perjury statement when the AFFIANT does not understand all of the
constantly changing tax laws contained in the IRS Tax Code, nor could the
AFFIANT ever understand them in the AFFIANT’s
lifetime."
(NOTE: Twice,
the response to our Affidavits was to come back with NO TAXES DUE. Except in one
case they came back with a $10,000 fine. We're still fighting that
one.)
Last week, in our article
entitled, "America, The Land of Censored Conservative
Speech" we wrote of the
attack on our First Amendment right of free speech by outright censorship of
conservative messages by government, activists and even industry. (By the way, Comcast has suddenly become very attentive to our wants and
needs, even giving us our own private tech person with a direct phone line and
extension.)
The five elements of the First
Amendment, including free speech, have been under attack by the federal
government, the left and special interests for decades. The free
expression of religion and the sanctity of religious belief (especially
Christians) have been berated as a bunch of religious fanatics
"clinging to their bibles and their guns." (Obama's words) The
right of "peaceable assembly" has been, in many cases, relegated to
government-designated "free speech zones". Petitioning government for the
"redress of grievances" has essentially evaporated when the government tells the
people, "Ha! Ha! You can't sue us." And the so-called "free press" is a joke. The "free
press" is owned, lock, stock and barrel, by special interests, mostly on the
left, and is now subject to FCC mandated "Net Neutrality." But it is the
intent of the liberals in the FCC ruling that "Net Neutrality" only applies to
the conservative free press.
Which brings us to the 2nd Amendment,
the right of the people to own guns for personal defense and as a substantial
deterrent against government tyranny. If it were not for the powerful
lobbying of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and those millions of
gun-owning individuals that support the NRA with their money, the 2nd Amendment
would be a pile of ashes left over from an arson fire, started by the
self-righteous, sanctimonious liberal left who never saw a gun law that didn't
like. Here is a very powerful opinion piece on an attack on the 2nd
Amendment by a courageous author:
You can pretty well kiss off the 4th
Amendment that protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizures.
The federal government can do warrant-less wiretaps and property searches and
seizures anytime they want. They can listen in on your telephone
conversations, read your e-mails and track you on social media. And lets
not forget the case of civil seizure laws where government can "take" your
property for just about any reason they can invent and keep it. It can take
years of legal wrangling in the courts to get your property back, that is, if
you can afford it.
In Wisconsin a highly politicized
liberal District Attorney got a judge to sign a multitude of search warrants
with trumped up probable cause allegations on "conservative" citizens for
alleged violations of campaign finance laws, as vengeance against Governor Scott
Walker.
Nighttime SWAT team raids on private
citizens, including the Wisconsin conservatives, have become commonplace, with
or without warrants. In one case we know of in Louisiana, a local
jurisdiction passed an ordinance that a property owner couldn't have in-operable
vehicles on their property. One property owner was, under the ordinance,
subjected to the warrant-less removal of two cars he was restoring, right out of
a carport on his property.
If you think you cannot be deprived of
your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (the 5th Amendment), by
government, local, state, or federal, think again. Environmental and
social justice laws have all but abolished life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. If you believe that government can't take your property under
eminent domain for other than a clear government purpose, you are living under
an illusion. They do it every day. If you believe you cannot be a
witness against your self, then you had better not sign the perjury statement on
IRS Form 1040.
Under the 6th Amendment an American
citizen is entitled to a speedy and public trial by a jury of his or her peers
and the defendant gets to confront the "witness or witnesses against him."
Au contraire! In many cases, such as an IRS case, the only real witnesses
are the attorneys for the IRS. An attorney is not a witness. Your
neighbor may call in an ordinance violation on you to the local authorities,
anonymous of course, for something you did or didn't do on your property.
The government will protect that anonymous witness and you will never get to
confront your accuser.
Then there are the 9th and 10th
Amendments that "grant all other rights to the states and the
people". The federal
government has been very clever in taking the money from federal income taxes
and using it as a bribe to get the state governments to comply with federal
policy. The states, hungry for federal money because they burned up all
the state's money in free stuff to the undeserving, illegal aliens, union
demands and insane environmental mandates, will comply with the FEDS while
abdicating the state's and the people's rights under the 9th and 10th
Amendments. The power of the federal government increases by these
cowardly abdications and continually erodes the rights of the states and the
people.
The pattern of the continual expansion
of federal government civil control over the states and the people is blatant,
overt, arrogant and outright unconstitutional. The militarization of
America by the U. S. Military, at the direction of the Executive Branch, as we
discussed in a previous article, is even more evidence of that growing power by
the FEDS, literally putting the people under the threat of death by the gun if
they don't knuckle under. Every day, the states and the people capitulate
to this growing federal power. The final result of this capitulation,
civil or military, is abject slavery.
Let's face it ladies and
gentlemen. The Bill of Rights, the foundation of the U. S. Constitution,
codifying into law the natural and unalienable rights of the free and sovereign
citizens of America, has been steadily and silently eaten away by an acrid
"acid" disguised in millions of unconstitutional laws, to the point that the
individual rights contained in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution are
all but meaningless.
One of the easiest targets for
government to conquer is the rural landowner. The rural landowner is
disenfranchised from the political process and has no voice or
representation. We have chronicled the plight of the rural landowner in
our video entitled "Rural America in the
Crosshairs".
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Sadly, the people have only
themselves to blame. Only an in-your-face "Declaration of Open Defiance and
Resistance by
millions of Americans, can stop and then reverse the Slow, Torturous,
Silent Repeal of the Bill of Rights.
But then if you like your rights
being taken away and it is OK with you that your sweat, blood and tears are
taken at the point of a gun and wasted on freeloaders, illegal aliens,
environmental insanity, social justice, indoctrination posing as education,
political correctness, endless bureaucratic inefficiency, fraud, abuse,
corruption and the move towards a one world order, then there is no need to make
such a Declaration, especially if you fear the government. The Ukrainian's feared
their government and Stalin, using his military, starved to death an estimated
7,000,000 of them.
But then who is listening? If
we are lucky, we will hear from about 3 people, out of the thousands that read
our articles.
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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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