10 Ways in Which Our Rights Have Been Usurped
John & Nisha Whitehead
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
Abraham Lincoln
It’s easy to become discouraged about the state of our nation.
We’re drowning under the weight of too much debt, too many wars, too much power in the hands of a centralized government, too many militarized police, too many laws, too many lobbyists, and generally too much bad news.
It’s harder to believe that change is possible, that the system can be reformed, that politicians can be principled, that courts can be just, that good can overcome evil, and that freedom will prevail.
So where does that leave us?
Benjamin Franklin provided the answer. As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention trudged out of Independence Hall on September 17, 1787, an anxious woman in the crowd waiting at the entrance inquired of Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”
What Franklin meant, of course, is that when all is said and done, we get the government we deserve.
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
“We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.
The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.
What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.
Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, twenty-plus years after 9/11 and with the nation just emerging from two years of COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates.
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.
Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption.
Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers.
States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.”
And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity.
Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge.
However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears.
However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment.
However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.
As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.
Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.
In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.
We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.
We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.
As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”
Americans are constitutionally illiterate.
Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For instance, a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that a little more than one-third of respondents (36 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government, while another one-third (35 percent) could not name a single one.
A survey by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that only one out of a thousand adults could identify the five rights protected by the First Amendment. On the other hand, more than half (52%) of the respondents could name at least two of the characters in the animated Simpsons television family, and 20% could name all five. And although half could name none of the freedoms in the First Amendment, a majority (54%) could name at least one of the three judges on the TV program American Idol, 41% could name two and one-fourth could name all three.
It gets worse.
Many who responded to the survey had a strange conception of what was in the First Amendment. For example, a startling number of respondents believed that the “right to own a pet” and the “right to drive a car” were part of the First Amendment. Another 38% believed that “taking the Fifth” was part of the First Amendment.
Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.
Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.
So what’s the solution?
Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties” is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.
As Jefferson wrote in 1820:
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of our society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.
Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.
Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.
A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.
The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.
Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.
Tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]
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Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
An interpretation: The Declaration of Independence … is not a legal prescription conferring powers upon the courts; and the Constitution’s refusal to “deny or disparage” other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even farther removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges’ list against laws duly enacted by the people.”
Justice Antonin Scalia – Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000)
The UN Charter of Human Rights has never been properly enacted for ‘we the people’ so why should the US Constitution be any different? Let’s fight for basic human rights – enough good food, clean water, safe shelter, right to safe congress, worship and to work – for all the world’s people.
The UN Charter of Human Rights is Trojan Horse, of sorts.
It infers that an external body must confer Rights upon us, rather than us already having inalienable Rights.
It’s a dangerous precedent that has been built upon many times. People eventually get used to being ‘given’ Rights. Therefore, if they believe a particular Right hasn’t been given to them, they don’t actually have it.
Likewise, they don’t kick off when a Right is taken away, as they believe that if the authority (in whatever form that may take) can give it, then it makes sense that the authority can take it away.
For the record, I do not object to the concept of being nice to people and not torturing, killing or otherwise fucking them up.
I found it hard even to begin reading beyond that headline…
10 ways?
Are there any ways left in which our rights have not been usurped…?
The way to stay in power and prevent the people from exercising theirs has been moulded in the ‘Public Education System’.
If you ensure that the majority of children spend 12 years of their lives NOT learning the things necessary to be active, effective adult citizens, then you will ensure that the public is weak, malleable and dupable.
Just what corrupt apparatchiks, billionaires and dictators want to do, isn’t it?
Makes you wonder that we the people know a scam more than the medical professionals.😬
You don’t necessarily, you may merely underestimate the ability of medical professionals to cover up their true medical knowledge to keep on earning lots of spondoolies.
Yes. Good point. The medical “profession” is a con job at the front gates of the circus…
Democracy (in fact most likely any political system, and perhaps most religious systems) has become a synthesis of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment.
Ordinary people like you and I vote for other ordinary people to become legislators and then the legislators forget they are ordinary people and begin to behave like the soulless corporation named ‘government’ which is then ‘-personified-‘.
The same could be said of Churches/Temples etc. to a greater or lessor extent.
How many attribute blame to ‘government’ when all government is: is ordinary people with a name tag and a clipboard (reductive for illustrative simplicity).
The etymolgy of government is to: ‘bind the mind’.
.
The greatest flaw in the Bill of Rights, is the electoral process described in the 8th Amendment. Other than this “loophole” in the civil process of democracy, the Document is by far the best in existence.
I would submit the authors were attempting to follow the dictates of Common Law and the Magna Carta, which somewhat address God given “rights” and liberties.
If the document were titled: “The Bill of Responsibility’s” it perhaps would have detailed the responsibility of Lawful civil actions within a functioning democracy. Alas…
Rights are permitted or dictated… Responsibilities are individually assumed…
Responsibilities are also intrinsic to holding certain employment posts or public offices.
In theory at least.
“However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.”
Quite correct, however, too few people are waking up to the dystopia that awaits them.
The Independents are more worried about abortion and the Dems are totally illiterate and brainwashed to think for themselvs.
Mention of the Rutherford Institute is appreciated. I’m not affiliated with the organization, but the remedial education of American citizens regarding the Bill of Rights, is an excellent suggestion.
The elephant sized bogeyman in the room. >
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution or Confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”
– John Adams –
Letter to Thomas Jefferson, August 25, 1787
The American democracy has been pawned off to corporate welfare…
UN-member ‘nations’ & their ‘governments’ are commercial Corporations and the Unidroit legal-code provides the framework.
Central Banks are privately owned and issue fiat currency to the Corporations, owed back with interest.
The citizens operate as legal-fictions with privileges once their birth is registered.
This system places everything into the Commercial jurisdiction.
Yes. Bingo. In Commercial business frameworks, everything is an asset or debt. Civilians are registered strawman Trusts.
I’ve reached the conclusion that the British bill of rights 1688 is a more powerful document than the us constitutional documents – I believe there is a reason why they refer to the taking of the throne by William and Mary as the glorious revolution. It’s because for the first time it annuciated that throes who govern are below the governed and that the governors can do nothing to harm the governed. It really is a miraculous document abs is truly all we need to truly understand how we might get back to a better society, if only we take the time and trouble to hold those to whom it applies to account. We need to live in a. Permanent state of vigilance less what has transpired, transpires.
I know, you know, everybody knows the US Democrats and Republicans are two peas in a pod. However, there are differences in tactics.
Case in point: there’s a current trend of “swatting” people – especially “conservative” office holders. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conservative Congresswoman from North Georgia, was “swatted” twice.
Someone called the police, reported a serious crime at her home. The Swat team showed up at her door.
If you recall from previous John Whitehead articles, Swat teams often shoot first then ask questions.
This sort of “scam” makes traditional dirty politics look like a game of Tiddlywinks.
Someone needs to tell the Democrats it’s not real: it’s all a ruse to fool the public – so stop trying to get opponents killed.
https://www.michaeltsarion.com/constitution-con.html
“We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” – Judge Charles Evans Hughes
And here’s larken rose on the constitution, https://youtu.be/OhfJrdl1120
I am a product of the 70s and grew up in what is currently one of the most liberal and tyrannical states in the Union. Illinois.
“Passing” “The Constitution Test” WAS a requirement before you could move on to the “next level” of education.
All three times the Bill of Rights was hammered into our brains.
Each of the three “tests” were almost identical.
All three times we spent weeks that were dedicated specifically to learning The Constitution and it’s importance in American history.
At the college level students were forced to take the Constitution Test Preparation Class before taking the test. History majors were given a bye and made fun of those forced to take the class. We mildly rebelled but at the same time we recognized the importance and went with it.
IT REINFORCED OUR COMMONALITY
I don’t know what the requirements currently are.
I am not even sure if my kids were required to take the test at all during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I just assumed.
We assumed the government would follow the “rules” outlined in The Constitution.
NEVER ASSUME
TRUST BUT VERIFY
Hold those violating the “rules” ACCOUNTABLE.
Here it comes:……..
Vote REPUBLICAN and throw the tyrannical leftists out of office.
To paraphrase Dan Bongino; Republicans may not be the solution to all of our problems but Democrats ARE the cause of those problems.
Sorry, I know many of you hate it when I write it.
You have 2 choices: One is to stay on the pathway to unconscious hysterical dystopia. The other is the pathway of reality and reason.
Making a political decision has never been easier.
Hatred should not be part of that decision process.
Just look around and see what is happening in our country.
It’s all on them.
And it only took them less than two years to install the state of FUBAR.
Voting the current regime out of office is definitely the first order of business. It is sad the Republican “party” has suffered the same levels of deceit as their “gentlemen across the aisle”.
All members of Congress have been in violation of the Constitution since the erasure of the Original Thirteenth Amendment. Their collective treason has never been addressed, nor the complacency of all three branches of government since approximately 1856….
Third party candidates have been excluded from any valid electoral process via PAC organizations and the gilded revolving doors of corporate/congress.
Corporate Reps & corp’ Dems are 2 cheeks, same corporate fascist ass. POTUS is the partisan hack in the middle. Oh, & there is no LW political force in Corporate America.
A handy excuse if you get caught scaling skyscrapers, or indeed for most crimes: that it’s all to to ‘raise awareness of global warming‘.
French ‘Spider-Man’ scales skyscraper aged 60
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62943910
I believe this is a wholly incorrect assumption. Instead, open the conversation about how current ‘democratic’ systems and the bedtime stories that support them have always been a blanket of lies on a bed of deceit.
A system will never improve or become equitable if you continue to rely on its founding ideological smokescreen. If there is to be a future for people free from corrupt systems of oppression a complete reset of the ideas, means and ways of how we live and cooperate with each other is required. A reset that is of our own making, not being imposed as part of the unending effort to establish ever greater control over us.
According the the black laws all the words you mentioned in the bill of right have triple quadruple meanings.
The Constitution is again the same nonsense to make you pretend you have rights or privileges.
Covid sure showed you didnt.
We need to scrutinize the definition of “Emergency” and leave the declaration of an emergency to Congress and not the executive branch. That’s how the problem was solved in the State of Michigan. The state legislature removed the tyrannical governor’s ability to declare an emergency of any type. And the state Covid mandates were rescinded and/or modified. It was like having her knee pulled off our necks. We have been living and breathing normally ever since.
The bill of rights was set by freemasons to protect freemasonry; now it’s so entrenched they no longer need it.
The UK is now more of the ideal model. If you think the Americans know nothing about their rights or their political system more generally, have you tried asking the British? In the UK rather than a document of individual rights with legal status, we have the Magna Carta which makes us think we’re free but has no status in law and which, on close inspection, turns out to be more about the rights of oligarchs (then called barons) than the individual.
This is part of why the USA is currently more in the crosshairs than the UK.
BTW I wouldn’t elevate political education too much, it’s just brainwashing. Most in the UK believe the monarchy has real power but politcal “education” tells them they haven’t. The populat perception is much nearer the truth than the Rockefeller-education nonsense.
Hi Edwige, the British constitution is a real thing and the founding constitutional document is the British bill of rights (1688) – still in force today as those who wrote it knew a thing or two (it can’t be fiddled with, removed, re-written etc.,) – if you look at the statute book it’s in place today, unaltered from the day it was enacted – see;
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2/contents
In brief it basically says that in return for the throne (royal perogative / priviledge) that the people (who are not subject to the document as it was between the royals, lords spiritual, lords temporal and parliament assembled) are above the governed and that those who govern can do nothing to prejudice the people (Cause no harm) – it’s a superb piece of writing – in short the government who perforce are to go about the betterment of the commonwealth, subject to the approval by parliament, can do no harm. That we have allowed ourselves to descend into the party parliament farce and government in parliament unconstitutional nonsense is due to the lack of understanding of our founding constitutional document which would not allow for the current day predicament we find ourselves in. I well know that this lack of knowledge is on purpose as we do have a superb constitution, it’s just not respected and it is this that we must engage with.
So, what you’re saying is, all this time all the wrongdoings could have been prevented if only people realised the power of the document? They could just hold it aloft, march to the highest court in the land and shout, “No more!” The fools, why haven’t they resisted?
Blaming the people and their ignorance for their oppression is a ballsy stance and for that I commend you. You’ve at least made me chuckle with your deceptive / naive view of a worthless piece of paper made fairytale.
Absolutely correct in so much as we are responsible for the current state of affairs. If it’s revolution you are looking for then as much as I understand that it usually ends with the new boss looking very much like the old boss. I am supportive of a more reformatory type affair which usually garners broader support than revolutionary affairs. I also think that it is incredibly important that such documents exist as they point toward a continuity of thought which should enlighten the collective conscious. Naive, perhaps, however that it points to a way of organising ourselves that is evidently sensible and historically based is altogether rather more powerful than simply creating the next thing upon which you would then look to convince people to support. I am rather guilty of liking the idea that our forebears knew the plain tyranny better than ourselves and organised themselves for us accordingly. That later generations then allowed abuses is at issue, the need for vigilance is appropriate here, but that the way is written in stone I find to be of a great deal when you point it out to people who know no better.
Quick note which may add to your mirth – I am in court on Tuesday and the mainstay of the defence is the bill of rights. Should make for an interesting day.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62944148
Man tries to kill corpse through lead coffin!
Also “A 19-year-old man was charged after allegedly exposing himself and pushing into mourners from behind”????? Attempted buggery at a coffin viewing? I’ll bet there’ll soon be a name for that!
I heard this yesterday on “the news”:
“Oh I recall that wonderful time the queen was almost bent double against the wind and she was gasping for breath. It was utterly charming!”
(Subtext: These Great Ones have mouths just like us! They breath just like us! Aren’t we honoured to have so much in common with them?)
There is something sickly appropriate in a society under siege with its population being decimated, that it should be focussing on vast queues lining up to stand for hours to walk past a coffin surrounded by staggeringly wasted wealth, the whole thing being treated as if it was a tragedy for a woman to die at 96.
I am so happy not to be there. When people ask me about it, I tell them almost the entire population are currently psychotic.
If you cannot connect the dots as to why it’s a tragedy, then it’s pointless trying to explain.
And no. I’m a republican as my name would suggest and not a royalist by any means.Yet her passing may in fact be the harbinger of worse times to come. As strange as it may seem, old Liz had morals and tried in extreme circumstances to live up to them.
Charley boy is not up to snuff and will acquiesce to every crazy notion put forward by the NWO.
A fantasy:
I go back in time 3 tears and tell everyone how, in 3 years time, they will be living in Orwell’s 1984.
Them: “Oh don’t be stupid! We would never stand for that!”
Me: “You were made to demand it!”
How about if you told Marxists that after 150 years of being told they were wrong about immiseration, when it started they wouldn’t even recognise it – because Marx omitted to mention there’d be a bs cover story.
They weren’t wrong.
We have been for some time already.
In Australia we have zero rights. None nada and zip as the last 2.5 years have finally exposed to the world. We had cops armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and capsicum spray to shoot at protestors against lockdowns, police raiding homes of people for posting about protests, cops smashing people for not wearing masks, people arrested for daring to cross internal state borders – and all of it is legal.
The electoral commission threatened me with huge fines and a criminal conviction unless I pay them a $20 “administration fee” for not voting in what they insist is a democracy even though there is a reigning monarch. When I went to school they fed us patriotic propaganda about “our” democracy and separation of church and state whilst regularly requiring us to stand and sing ‘god save the queen’ and if we didn’t we would be caned. The question is, how can any sane or decent person be expected to respect this form of government? Why do so many take it seriously?
Australia and indeed all nations are really cults. And Team Australia I can tell you absolutely does not tolerate independent thoughts or ideas.
Australia is a pissant back water too terrified of modernity to get out of their own way.
However, while I agree with you, an universal franchise is not to be sniffed at and although, I think that being fined for not voting is absurd, not voting is a vote for the people in power. If you cannot find an honorable party to vote for, you should be allowed to spoil you vote and they should be counted. This number should be a deficit to all the parties participating – reducing their margins and in no uncertain terms telling those who run the election that something is rotten in the state of “Denmark”!
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a democracy or a dictatorship.” — Hermann Goering.
The direction of the country depends on its Leaders:
Here is a heterogeneous assemblage of countries being Led in the right direction by modern Leaders of the same enlightened calibre as Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; namely, the Shangai Coop.
Statement by H.E. Xi Jinping
President of the People’s Republic of China
At the 22nd Meeting of Heads of State of The Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Samarkand, Sept. 16, 2022
“Your Excellency President Mirziyoyev, Colleagues,
“I salute Uzbekistan for the great job it has done to promote SCO cooperation in various fields during its presidency over the past year. Samarkand witnessed the glory of the ancient Silk Road, a route that greatly boosted the flow of goods, spread of science and technology, interaction of ideas, and integration of diverse cultures on the Eurasian continent. Indeed, the ancient Silk Road has remained a historical source of inspiration for us SCO member states as we pursue peace and development.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Treaty on Long-Term Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation Between the SCO Member States. Over the years, guided by founding documents, we have succeeded in exploring a new path for the development of international organizations.
— Political trust. Guided by the vision of forging enduring friendship and peace among the SCO member states, we respect each other’s core interests and choice of development path and support each other in achieving peace, stability, development and rejuvenation.
— Win-win cooperation. We accommodate each other’s interests, stay true to the principle of consultation and cooperation for shared benefits, enhance synergy between our respective development strategies, and keep to the path of win-win cooperation toward common prosperity.
— Equality between nations. We are committed to the principle of equality among all countries regardless of their size, consensus-based decision-making, and addressing issues through friendly consultations. We reject the practice of the strong bullying the weak or the big bullying the small.
— Openness and inclusiveness. We stand for harmonious coexistence and mutual learning between different countries, nations and cultures, dialogue between civilizations and seeking common ground while shelving differences. We are ready to establish partnership and develop win-win cooperation with other countries and international organizations that share our vision.
— Equity and justice. We are committed to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter; we tackle major international and regional issues on the basis of their merits, and oppose the pursuit of one’s own agenda at the expense of other countries’ legitimate rights and interests.
These five points fully embody the Shanghai Spirit, namely, mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations and pursuit of common development. It is the fundamental guide”
Top trolling.
Fine words butter no parsnips.
Fine parsnips butter no words.
The bogeyman may have changed but the parasite that infests America is still the same.
Liberty is the freedom to do what the law allows. But cops will arrest you anyway.
Remember the SC ruling (7-1): cops can proceed w a possession prosecution against motorist pulled over while driving legally (broken tail light).
It is monumentally difficult to ‘speak with one voice’ because the peeps in power spend billions of $$$ ensuring that we’re polarized and divided. However, UNITY is still our strength.
Unfortunately, it is too darn easy to divide people … too bloody easy – and the disgracefully-rich exploit this by using every trick in the book to fracture society.
We ALL know that unity is our strength, and yet we still mindlessly seek to elevate our own fragile status, based on combinations of fleeting-illusion or egotistical mania, sprinkled with false) assumptions of being different or better than ‘whomever’ … and so on, and so forth.
You forgot to mention distracted by an endless torrent of bread and circuses ably provided by a corrupt and controlled MSM.
If we weren’t intentionally divided, we would be divided anyway. We’re not robots, at least most of us, and people have different views, opinions, and needs and wants. It’s not like we would all want the same thing if there was zero interference from the psycho class. There is power in numbers and unity, but universal unity is impossible. One thing the fake Covid-19 scam has revealed is a dividing line that is going to be there no matter what. The unity has to occur among segments to fight for what they believe.
P.S. Do you have a 31 hot rod by chance?
No ‘Bill of Rights’ in Australia.
We’re just customers, cannon fodder and lab rats.
As with the mention of treaty Australia goes into an hysterical meltdown over the words bill of rights.
I remember during the cold war studies conducted in which people were read parts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights without being told the source (would it have mattered?) and identifying what they heard as some communist manifesto. The dumbing down of Ughmerikans no doubt has grown worse since then with further declines in literacy and active citizenship and advances in propaganda and mind control. But the old grade-school civic courses I took consisting of the evils of the Soviet Union versus the virtues of truth, justice, and the American Way would have left me pretty poorly equipped to deal with reality if I hadn’t found them about as believable as lessons on the evils of masturbation or marijuana (reefer madness) or whatever the ridiculous adults were telling us.
Of course, knowing such things as the three branches of government when all have been corporatized to the point of fascism or civil rights in the abstract when in practice they don’t mean shit doesn’t go very far. In this respect, I very much appreciate the work of the Whiteheads in countering such formal instruction with critical social and historical analysis, even if they may be voices crying in the wasteland.
How many people could answe which secret society Benjamin Franklin belonged to? Or how many bodies were found in the basement of his house?
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/xghx1b/fun_fact_the_british_royal_family_changed_their/
“Look at it this way. The Cull Juice is just another Corporate Fascist Eugenics Euthanasia program to reduce the herd.”
Their Royal H-anuses.
Don’t forget they left their cousin to his supposed fate in 1917/8 when they had the chance to save him and his family. Almost as if it was being set-up that way….
George V, Queen Mary and Princess Mary are all German even though they were born in Britain, so how man generations until they finally become British?
Pedants corner: The Brythons were Celts who gave their name to the British Isles and the West coast of France (Brittany of the Bretons). The Angles, Saxons and Normans who gave their name to England were a Germanic people who gradually took over; such as Wilhelm of Normandy, Dutch Billy (Deutsch Wilhelm) of Orange, Georg Ludwig of Hanover, and Albert of Saxe-Coburg. So Elizabeth II of England was as English as Elizabeth 1 of England, because most of the English have Germanic roots. British is just a name which the Germanic nobility of England added to accommodate the Brythonic king James of Scotland when Elizabeth 1 died, and that ancient name for these isles was reinforced by its Germanic ruling class after Deutsch Billy conquered Brythonic Ireland.
Britain was named as such because it was a major source of Tin during the Bronze Age.
330 million of us working together?! Come on man. Need to get real on that. One thing that has become clear to me is there is a certain percentage of people who now and always will want this totalitarian nightmare. If not flat out want, they certainly won’t do a damn thing about it. Not to mention all those who willingly support, enforce, and facilitate it, like cops, military, defense contractors, all the workers who’s livelihoods depend on the tyrannical state and corporations, etc. Like in Britain where it appears a certain percentage want and will always want a royalty system. While for others, it literally makes them puke. What those percentages are is hard to tell, but there sure seems to be a lot of lemmings in Britain. You’re probably outnumbered there. Probably in Amerika too. And that doesn’t count the completely braindead. We’ve got those in spades in the U.S.
It’s almost like we’re headed for an ideological split, if that’s possible. Like, everybody for freedom and liberty over here, everybody for tyranny and control over here. I think the side for freedom and liberty is a lot smaller at this time but has more potential for growth. The more the stranglehold tightens, more will push back. We can only hope.
The USadmin are haphazard about teaching their constitution to young american’s for the same reason Law and some legal education isn’t on the curriculum.
The NWO want to deprive us of the tools to defend ourselves, and they then want to lord over us in defeat as if it was a fair fight.
Any constitution or bill of rights is only as good as the people willing to defend it. When the highest law in the land has been usurped and misused, the options are minimal.
One could strive for a quiet life of continual acquiescence to one’s continual detriment, but it would be a fairly short and miserable life. Until one day, the NWO psycho bully finally says that you own nothing, not even your right to a constitution, or a bill of rights.
They don’t want people to know the difference between ‘lawful’ and ‘legal’ and the Common Law as opposed to their Statutory rules and regulations that only become ‘laws’ which are enforceable if the people consent to them – that’s one reason why it’s not on the curriculum Peter. Their Courts are corporations -places of business, the police are also corporations and so are MPs and the Government of the UK in particular.
Same thing here in Australia. Corporations rule. You can easily look up the ABN’s (Australian Business Number) of fed govt, state govt, all police ‘services’, local governments, etc. etc.
Like the UK, we are ruled by maritime law. Its in our language – e.g. the river banks control our currency. you have a berth certificate from the dock to prove your citizen-ship. you can be bailed out of jail and your debts may put you underwater, etc. etc.
Hi Kika, that’s precisely why more people should consider establishing and joining the Common Law Court (International) system at the level of local communities at first, to deal with corrupt local officials who are pushing the NWO agenda on orders from above and who have failed to acknowledge the criminal evidence.
You can’t go it alone and need to organize, which requires the support of the local people, as its strength in numbers. The more that join and become effectively organized and conversant with the Common Law and the way it operates from outside of their corrupt “legal system” the better. It will work providing nobody does anything stupid or gets hold of the wrong end of the stick!
Once people finally grasp the truth of the situation, they will want something done about it as they will be horrified at the level of fraud and corruption involved in the Convid and vaccine scams, but they are not quite there YET.
The people will also want something done about the traitors and collaborators in government and the pharmaceutical industry etc etc who knew in full consciousness what’s really been inflicted in the population and is still being inflicted (as a means to a predetermined end) but did NOTHING whatsoever to prevent it.
What “rights”?!
MMS/3i’s do not have rights.
Here’s a quick and sober look at Anarchism vs Government from Larken Rose, author of The Most Dangerous Superstition.
https://rumble.com/v1kcg47-the-problem-with-anarchism-larken-rose.html
That guys a dickhead.
Opening statement:
“Without government, people would have different ideas about whats right and wrong”
Right, mr anarchist, government provides the moral compass?
So, please explain, how mankind got to HERE without a government for the majority of its existence.
Larken Rose?
Shithouse arsehole
Normal people listen to more than one sentence before declaring judgement.
I’m not an expert on anything. In fact, I will readily admit that there’s a whole lot more I don’t know than what I do know.
Be that as it may, I have a question for you:
Why are we here?
I don’t mean why are we here on this website.
I mean, why are we here on this planet?
Keep in mind, there is no right or wrong answer to the question.
The whole concept of personal freedom and the right to say what you think is the enemy of the woke ‘liberation’ zealots. As long as they represent the narrative and dictate the thought police, we’re fvked…
We cannot speak with one voice anymore because our country is owned by our enemies and they speak a different language. Half of the country hate God and nature. All of the country are being poisoned and the Earth is too burdened help us anymore. The global coup has been well under way for decades. The time to have acted on this information was in the 60’s, when the ecstasy over miraculous gadgets began to wane, Walter Cronkite the communist became the most trusted man in America and the Beatles danced us down pedophile lane. Still, even by then, the rot was advanced. Once the foundations have been reduced to wet cork, there is nothing you can do to save the building.
What?
What?
Anyone who looks funny in America is a communist – or at least for the older generation who are still twitching to that particular Pavlovian button. As for the Beatles, the Americans have always had a fixation on how they “came to undermine us”. The “British invasion” was probably the first time any of these freedom saluters were made aware there was a world outside the States. It was an immense shock and they didn’t like it one bit. (Naturally the Beatles were also communists.)
Indeed. In my all-boys high school, c. 1972, some of us “grew” beards as soon as we acquired enough beard to show; fortunately, the school’s dress code didn’t forbid facial (or long) hair. (I enclose “grew” in ironic quotes because disapproving adults seemed oblivious to the fact that body hair grows on its own, and actually requires sustained depilatory techniques to remove or suppress.)
Anyway, one of my friends who was lucky enough to have a girlfriend ruefully declined to follow suit. His girlfriend’s mother reportedly darkly considered any male who “wore” a beard to be a “Communist”. I never actually met the pogonophobic mother, so I have no idea why she espoused this conviction apart from buying into the Cold War mindset of that era.
FWIW, at the time we considered ourselves would-be countercultural “freaks”– the East Coast version of adolescent “hippie”-wannabes. Except for superficial antiwar sentiments and similar contrarian attitudes, we weren’t geopolitically aware or into politics and ideology at all. So we found the ludicrous notion that we must be “Communists” hilarious.
Reads like a KKK rant to me Patrick.
Alternatively, for me it brought to mind the John Birch Society. 😎
RM your comment is defeatist as you appear to accept defeat as a foregone conclusion before making any effort to succeed.
People still live on Earth and in buildings within the biosphere, and within communities within nations, so they can still make significant changes globally if they muster up enough courage and willpower to do so collectively. The majority of those who dwell upon the Earh are still among the living not the dead. Let’s work to keep it that way!
Pending at 8:41.
Pending at 10:19 pm.
— quoted two lines from someone else’s post (12 words in total) and added the single word “What?” after each line.
What’s the rationale behind these mysterious ‘pendings’? What’s the objection? Who programmes the almighty algorithm?
All my comments get put in pending.
I gave up trying to engage in any discussions a year or so ago because of it. Good to read some of the articles here but the spam filter kills any chance of real discussion. That and the email notifications stop working long ago.
and I know 100% if i edit the above post to change stop to stopped the whole post will be marked as spam and deleted.
Off topic but FUCK!
https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1570681624127471616
6 feet distancing, the rigorous product of intensive scientific research – to be backed up by those CGI shorts with evil purple clouds wafting between etc. And all the supercillious buyers of the covid crud getting all hoity toity about “The Science” with the little green tentacled horrors having that precise reach etc.
And ….
“We made it all up!”
It’s all made up, all of it. COUPVID is and always has been a gigantic piss-take, a blatantly obvious confidence trick that worked like a charm on the highly educated and heavily mortgaged class, the kind of people who sneer at “tinfoil hattery” and would never answer an email from a “Nigerian prince”. The managers and administrators, the journalists, the indispensable mediators, the courtiers.
Children saw through it from the start.
It’s striking how irrelevant, how positively objectionable, centuries of human culture have become to The Culture. Don’t dare admit you’ve heard a folktale (never mind read a novel) and actually thought it might mean something. Instead, #FollowTheScience™, even if it makes no sense at all. That’s an order.
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2022/09/06/10-humanity-in-dark-times-the-road-to-fascism-for-a-critique-of-the-global-biosecurity-state/
🤘 touche!
Made up, yes of course. But not without intent. COUPVID was a training exercise; embedding mechanisms of behaviour and control that will be called upon when the FIAT ponzi scheme comes crashing down.
You won’t see ‘Lockdowns’ for another virus anytime soon; you’ll see them when civil order is to be maintained in a hyper-inflationary currency collapse. Most in the west have not experienced FIAT death-throes; the enraged citizenry will need to be carefully managed if the PTB want to maintain control into the Bretton Woods 2.0 monetary renegotiation period.
Yes, the intent is obvious. I use the term “COUPVID” to designate the entire process of neofeudalisation, the ongoing technofascist coup, the whole fucking war of attrition. Not just the lockdowns of 2020-21, but also the “vaccines”, the capture of government by corporations, the planned hyperinflation, the abolition of cash, the censorship & indoctrination, the screen-addiction & virtualisation, the antisocial distancing, the destruction of language & sociality & public space, the Carbon scam and the Ukraine ruse and the Trans cult and all the rest of it, with the elevation of Scientism to a new state religion administered by a priestly class of designated and brevetted and unelected Experts.
That’s COUPVID.
But:
I don’t agree with you there. Until the grotesque dogma of the Tiny Invisible Airborne Killer-Dots is rejected and resisted en masse, they can pull exactly the same panicmongering trick over and over again whenever they please.
Worse, the last thirty months of this siege have already in fact taken a toll on the health of billions, especially those who succumbed to the sacred needle. When people do fall ill in large numbers this winter, the Experts won’t hesitate to declare another “outbreak” of something “contagious” and blame it on a Killer Dot. “Terribly sorry, but we have to lock you down again. It would be irresponsible not to.”
Note too that millions of people are still being subjected to Lockdowns repeatedly at 0 minutes’ notice in cities all over China, the world’s most populous country,
Meanwhile, the coalition government in Germany, the biggest country in Europe, has just passed its ridiculous and sinister Infection Protection Act, effective as of 1 Oct 2022.
It’s all entirely dependent on the pseudoscience of Virology, which has no clothes.
There is no effective and lasting defence against any part of the Great Reset until that pseudoscience is challenged, exposed and defeated.
Exactly my worry, when excess deaths kick even higher into gear come winter and people are noticeably dropping like flies, a new covid variant will be declared.
Half of me believes the majority of people are so compassion fatigued about the “vulnerable” and the NHS and personally struggling so much financially and mentally that any restrictions will be ignored by people who are too worn down to give a shit anymore. Especially about “saving the NHS”. People are slowly realising that they sacrificed everything to save an NHS that isn’t here to save them now that they need it. The resentment is palpable.
Is it your impression that large numbers of people in the UK are finally opening their eyes? I hope so. It appears to depend very much on what part of the country you’re in, and especially on the social class of the people you’re talking to.
The opinion-making class have staked their entire reputation on the trustworthiness of the government, TheScience™ and the media, but certain facts are becoming unignorable, such as the ineffectiveness of the “vaccines”, the mass death of young athletes, and (last not least) their own horrendous heating bills.
It all places them in a bit of a dilemma.
What you outline may well be the way the cookie crumbles, though I don’t think there is much stomach for renewed biosecurity measures, at least in the short term. What a time to be alive . . .
What Patrick outlines sums up pretty accurately what reality is, without diminishing its power and the seriousness of the situation. (And it is good to say so as not to forget where we are.) Practically – a tragedy for all of us. And because we are participants in it, everyone can have one or more hopes for the improvement of the situation, attributing the possibility of awareness to more individuals and their effective unification against this imposition of power. Viewed from the outside, the opposite is happening, and there is nothing to indicate that this personal misunderstanding of the majority of individuals and its unification into ever more complete subordination will not deepen. Any way that is pointed out as a way out can and has so far been easily disproved, mainly for the reason that it requires mass awareness of reality and subsequent action.
And any proposed legal way of counteracting it is simply ridiculous and not worthy of comment, because those who are the source of today’s events control those who apply the law and are already rewriting it. If this were not the case, by now there would be an effective work that reaches the sources of power, not just the average and small executors of the wishes of the sources of power. There is no such dreaming thing; and there won’t be.
So, since there is no effective way of coping, no old model to use, and a clear consciousness indicates that we are completely cornered, the door is open to new ways of coping. Here is an opportunity for a truly significant and fateful activation of the creative, combinatorial, cunning function of the mind, which, however reasonable, has become accustomed to the use of old efficient models working in the old simpler situation. Some of them worked and allowed people who did not agree with the bad side of the system to survive and even survive well within its framework, but for 2-3 years now, this is over and there is no going back.
Here an invaluable opportunity for all who did not like the old society, the old thinking and Action (for the most part), the old construction, to dare and try to build their own better. For many part of the evil of the old is built up by the complicity of the people in it, who first perceive it in their minds; who then guides their hands. Here is an opportunity to build new thinking, new, better relationships, and then new actions. Here’s a motive you can’t dismiss, an imperative.
The old will not return, there will be no regaining of freedoms, and there is no reason why. The old, if it were so good, if it were what we want to preserve (supposedly “the good of it”), would not lead to the possibility of the present (that part of it which that depends on the complicity of the people). Most of the old so-called freedoms were just slavery in Wolfskin. As a small example, the freedom to choose to organize and limit your life to a narrow circle of acquaintances who share your more objective and reasonable view of reality. Comfort, which is usually presented as inevitability.
It is an inconvenience to dive into the ranks of the lazy, the stupid, the ignorant, to try to light a little candle of interest in reality that is slipping from their darkened minds. Without the right model for success in this endeavor; without even a reason that you will succeed, on the contrary, seeing the constant failure; but continuing thoughtlessly.. Not a good investment, is it? Who, how many of the more enlightened minds were engaged in this doomed enterprise? How many of those who tried, continued, despite their failure, to do so? To humbly understand their failures and to think of new and new approaches to the realization of their idealistic determination?
Not much, I think. Most preferred the comfort of their narrow circles of already reasonable people to share with, as a corner of comfort in this turbulent and stupid world. And instead of the doomed attempt to wake the sleepers, they left them to their free will to choose to sleep. And now, from the same smart people, we hear a lot of angry voices about” sheep, ” how dumb and stupid they are, and how everything goes to hell because of them.
Well, you know what,” sheep ” have exactly the same rights as you to participate or not participate in the creation of their proposed dystopia. They also took advantage of the free will to remain in the darkness of ignorance, which was generously granted to them, including by many knowledgeable people who preferred comfort before 2020. Because we did not know that such a push would come, and was not of the utmost decisive importance, directly affecting our general survival, the constant attempt to contact the lost stupid people, and their awareness.
What happened after 2020 happened before 2020; it was determined by all the circumstances together, including what I mentioned. Smart people have chosen how to proceed with the “sheep” before 2020, and the sheep, from 2020 onwards, have freely chosen how to act. There’s “from now on what?”without correct old answers, with great ambiguity, and the possibility of seeing which of the old, which was considered good, is bad, from which adequate answers to the new situation in which we find ourselves may arise.
Obey your priest medicine men. For they commune with God.
Another outrage, courtesy of the corporate media and the interests they represent. There will be a day of reckoning for these people.
https://www.naturalblaze.com/2022/09/bbc-boasts-it-got-vaccine-injured-support-group-with-250000-members-removed-from-facebook.html
That is downright fucking evil, but there again what do you expect from the black cock corporation.
I agree. We’re dealing with a bottomless pit of corruption.
Indeed, mass insanity!
It’s the system of oppositional action. What they say is opposed to what they do and vice versa. Its done by the ones that say they are our friends, who will protects and serve us, but are not for they are from the church of the evil one! It is his legion that is our real enemy on this earth, the system that is hate, destruction and death. The system of the one that makes the whole world believe he doesn’t exist. “That what is not, but was and still is”!
Welcome to “covid-1984″…
sorry! 😉
This personal story sparked my outrage, reminding me of all too common experiences with doctors and the medical meat market:
Woman Injured by J&J Vaccine Has ‘Never Seen Such Meanness’
Two jabs for freedom they were told.
Only to be abused, insulted and abandoned.
A harsh lesson to learn in life…
Conspiracy theories are premature facts.
A lesson too late for many to learn.
“The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears.”
i.e. from preconceived notions and fears deliberately stamped there by months of media repetition, the media having carried out their own trial and conviction with no legal restraints whatsoever. And if the jury “misbehave” and don’t go along with the media it doesn’t matter. The accused has already been ruined and will continue to be hounded.
The George Floyd jury found them guilty of both deliberately and not deliberately killing Floyd simultaneously. However the threat at the time was “guilty – or your city will burn down” which probably doesn’t aid rational thinking.
That is not quite right, they didn’t have an open intent to kill him when they found him minding his own businesses, that changed the second Chauvin put his knee on his neck and became murder with intent to murder.