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[An address given to the 2007 Constitution Day
Conference of the New Hampshire Center for Constitutional Studies, Nashua,
New Hampshire, on 23 September 2007.]
Patrick
Henry admonished his countrymen to “guard with jealous attention the
public liberty.” Doubtlessly, every patriot in that era knew what he
meant. Today, Americans have constantly thrust at them the term
“homeland security”—with the tacit assumption in this barrage
of propaganda that everyone knows what “homeland security” means.
To be sure, no contemporary patriot could complain if attaining
“homeland security” entails “guard[ing] with jealous
attention the public liberty,” as Patrick Henry understood those words.
But apparently the purveyors of the term “homeland security”
expect Americans to deduce its meaning from our nation’s more recent
experiences. Very well. When during the 20th century has America enjoyed a
state of affairs that could rightfully be called “homeland
security”?
Consider
the numerous military conflicts in which America participated. All were
fought ostensibly for reasons of “national security.” Some were
supposedly won—and at a superficial level they may have been. Some were
admittedly lost. Yet, at the most fundamental level, in the long term each
and every one of them brought with it a major defeat for America’s
true national security, with fateful consequences both at home and abroad.
This,
because a war is not won or lost only on the battlefields, but also, perhaps
especially, in the state of affairs that flow from it into the future.
Ostensibly “winning” a war is never as important as preserving
America’s political principles and institutions. “Winning”
a war can never be an excuse to disregard, to subvert, and especially to
destroy those principles and institutions. Indeed, “winning” a
war depends upon preserving, protecting, and passing on to future generations
those principles and institutions intact and vibrant.
Let
us now peruse the historical record.
·In
World War I, the rhetoric was stirring: It was “the war to end all
wars” and “the war to make the world safe for democracy.”
The reality, however, was that neither of these grandiose goals was achieved.
America’s
involvement as a participant in the fighting, rather than as a neutral
mediator, guaranteed the destruction of the old order, and the future
instability, of Europe. Several monarchies were toppled—Germany,
Russia, Austria, Hungary. But they were not replaced with stable
“democracies.” Rather, the collapse of Russia unleashed
Bolshevism. The economic, political, and social chaos that descended upon
Germany led to Hitlerism. And the Treaty of Versailles generated revanchisme
throughout Central Europe, thus sowing the dragon’s teeth for a future,
even more destructive war.
The
only apparent “success” was the establishment of the League of
Nations. But this was a success only for the proponents of “world
government.” As such, it was a direct attack on America’s
national independence. For a dangerous fallacy and folly lurked at the heart
of the slogan “the war to end all wars”: If there would be no
more wars, it could only be because no nation could launch a war. Which would
require international disarmament, permanently enforced. Which would require
a world super-state with irresistible police powers.
Moreover,
a dangerous fallacy and folly lurked at the heart of the slogan “the
war to make the world safe for democracy.” If
“democracy” were to be brought to the whole
world—presumably, by some supra-national organization—that
would include America, too. America, however, is not a
“democracy,” but a constitutional federal republic. America
cannot become a “democracy” without destroying what is uniquely
American. So, either the American proponents of this slogan did not
understand their own country’s special political nature and legal
structure, or they intended to change them radically—indeed, to
destroy them utterly.
·In
Europe, World War II actually started when Hitler and Stalin signed their
1939 Pact that set the stage for their joint invasion, conquest, and
partition of Poland. Yet America then found herself allied with Stalin, one
of the original aggressors. And, in the end, Stalin not only won his war
against Hitler, but also was allowed to keep everything for which he had
bargained in 1939, and to absorb a great deal more besides in Eastern Europe.
In
Asia, the war started over the Japanese incursion into
China—“maintaining the territorial integrity of China” was
America’s professed goal in that area. In addition to this, the
on-going Chinese civil war posed the second great threat of communism. At
Yalta, however, Roosevelt invited Stalin into the Asiatic war. With
Stalin’s assistance, Mao Tse-tung’s communists took over mainland
China, driving the Nationalists to Taiwan—thus obliterating “the
territorial integrity of China”. And another nation of the war’s
“Big Four” became a totalitarian communist state.
The
sole unalloyed “success” of World War II—but, once again, only
for the globalists—was the formation of another,
even-more-extensive apparatus for “world government”, the United
Nations. Yet “united” in what, when one of the two original
aggressors in World War II sat in the Security Council? And what
“nations” did the Dark Powers behind this apparatus expect would
survive its intended evolution? Was it not designed eventually to subordinate
all nations to its control, and then to supplant them with some supra-national
apparatus?
·The
Korean “police action” and the Vietnamese conflict were direct
consequences of the loss of World War II in China. The results speak for
themselves.
·Now,
America is embroiled in a conflict in the Middle East—which its
proponents promise will be an endless “war of civilizations”,
with this country pitted against 1.5 billion Muslims until either Islam, or
America, is destroyed.
America’s
“homeland security” has steadily decreased as a result of these
conflicts.
·In
support of interventionism , Woodrow Wilson sold Americans the bill of goods
that the quarrels of the world were their quarrels, in which they must become
involved at whatever cost in blood and treasure. This was aimed at promoting
globalism—at that time through America’s involvement in the
League of Nations. That trick did not work. But the Sirens’ song of
interventionism and internationalism has remained the constant theme of every
Administration since then.
Importantly,
as well, Wilson oversaw the creation of both: (i) the individual income tax,
which laid the subflooring in the comprehensive national-surveillance state
the Dark Powers were planning; and (ii) the Federal Reserve System, which
erected the superstructure of monetary and banking fascism over America,
without which her involvement in World War I—and in later conflicts as
well—probably could never have been financed.
·Franklin
Delano Roosevelt promoted more globalism, through the United Nations.
Although the Federal Reserve System had failed in 1932, he gave it more power,
and used the collapse of the banks as an excuse to exert even more financial
control than ever over individuals, through the gold seizure and the
prohibition of “gold-clause contracts”. And he ushered in the
national dependency-state with Social Security. Overall, Roosevelt promised
Americans “freedom from want” and “freedom from
fear”—and now they suffer from more fear than ever, and soon will
know increasing want.
·Lyndon
Johnson, sold Americans the snake oil that they could have both bread and
bullets: both the massive governmental spending of Johnson’s Great
Society and the extensive and expensive slaughter of the Vietnamese
conflict. This childish swindle was floated on the confidence game of fiat-currency
inflationism as the way out of all difficulties: spend and spend, inflate and
inflate, elect and elect.
·Now,
under George W. Bush, America has retrogressed from a “limited
war” in part of Southeast Asia, that proved to be unwinnable as it was
fought, to an unlimited, never-ending conflict with 1.5 billion Muslims
throughout the entire world, which is unwinnable no matter how it is fought.
Meanwhile,
here at home, America’s most dangerous enemies—and
America’s most dangerous enemies are always domestic enemies—are
working tirelessly behind the scenes to submerge her in the North American
Union. This globalist scheme is even worse than the League of Nations or the
United Nations. For both of them at least pretended to accept the continued
existence of the various nations that composed them; whereas, the North
American Union is openly designed to end America’s national
independence—and her unique form of constitutionalism—entirely.
And
to ensure that Americans can do nothing about their country’s imminent
demise, the globalists are asserting more and more claims of “war
powers,” “emergency powers,” “inherent powers”
of the “Commander in Chief,” and powers of “martial
law”—all of which are to be exercised through abolition of the
posse comitatus doctrine, establishment of military commissions, the para-militarization
of State and Local police, domestic espionage by an unlimited surveillance
state, and repression of dissenters, under color of fighting “the
global war on terror.”
This
rather lugubrious history can be summed up in the term “black-hole politics”:
All unchecked political power gravitates towards a central high point and
intensifies, while all undefended individual liberty gravitates towards a low
point from which none escapes. The
sequence in this country involves:
- concentration of power in the General
Government at the expense of the States and WE THE People; then
- centralization of power in the Executive
Branch; then ·localization of power in the President (the
so-called “Decider”); and finally
- para-militarization of the whole apparatus, from
top to bottom, with black-uniformed thugs loyal to the Leader; while
- the Constitution is systematically degraded to
a largely ceremonial document that controls the procedures for elections
of certain public officials, but then imposes next to no limits on their
behavior.
Although
none of this has provided security for the American people, but instead has
led to ever-increasing insecurity, it has gone on, and promises to go on into
the indefinite future. Why? Well, notice how natural it is to speak of all
these events in terms of specific Leaders, such as Wilson, Roosevelt,
and Bush. So natural that it compels the conclusion that this litany of woe
has resulted from the American people’s having acquiesced, and
continuing to acquiesce, in misrule by the Leader Principle—or, in the
language most appropriate for expressing it, das Führerprinzip.
To provide
true “homeland security,” Americans need to put into
place—and, even more importantly, to put into
operation—institutions that minimize the opportunities for the Leader
Principle to come into play, if not preclude and exclude it altogether.
Americans already know how to do that. American constitutionalism is the
very opposite of the Leader Principle, and therefore the true source of
“homeland security.”
Under
the Leader Principle, anything can happen, depending on the intelligence,
talents, psychology, character, and even the appetites and vices of the
Leader. This situation is the essence of political and economic insecurity.
In contrast, under the Constitution, Americans know what must happen—or
at least what is always supposed to happen. The situation is not one of
changing and unpredictably changeable “leaders”, but of laws.
This is the essence of political and economic security.
So,
the Constitution being the key to the matter, exactly what does it say about security?
The only place in the Constitution where the word “security”
appears is the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Notice, though: not just
“security,” but “the security of a free State.”
This and this alone is the proper definition of “homeland
security”: the security of America as “a free State.”
Moreover, “[a] well regulated Militia” is “necessary”
for such security. And all of these—“a free State,” its
“security,” and “[a] well regulated
Militia”—are linked, in a cause and effect relationship, to “the
people,” not to some “leader.”
In
particular, all of them are linked specifically to “the
people’s”—not some
“leader’s”—exercise of the Power of the Sword:
“the right * * * to keep and bear Arms.” “[T]he right of
the people to keep and bear Arms” as against whom? As against public
officials. “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms”
represents the ability of the principals to exercise power—if
necessary, firepower—against their own rogue agents. The Second
Amendment directs that public officials shall be absolutely subject to
“the people” in the most important particular possible: control
over the instruments of political force. Thus, the Second Amendment rather
starkly excludes the Leader Principle, and takes as its foundation the
People Principle.
Under
the original Constitution, although the word “security” is not
used, the essential elements of “homeland security” are laid out
in the Preamble:
·“[A]
more perfect Union”—not the creation of artificial divisions and
synthetic strife within society, as through the balkanization of this country
by means of “multiculturalism” and “pluralism.”
·“Justice”—the result of applying those “just
powers” that the Declaration of Independence tells us governments
“deriv[e] * * * from the consent of the governed,” and that stem
originally from the moral and theological precepts of “the Laws of
Nature and of Nature’s God.”
·“[D]omestic Tranquility”—not just the absence of
turmoil, but, as the Declaration of Independence recites, a state of affairs
that allows for every man to engage in “the pursuit of
happiness”; that is, a social and political context in which all men of
good will can live peaceful, prosperous lives.
·“[T]he common defence”—not aggression and
neo-imperialism, but “America first, second, and third.”
·“[T]he general Welfare”—not the prostitution
of government to pander to selfish special interests, but the exclusion of
factions from the public councils.
·“[T]he blessings of Liberty”—not a police
state, a surveillance state, or a national-security state, but “a free
State” in which WE THE PEOPLE themselves hold in their own hands the
ultimate power.
What
are the structures the Constitution provides to attain this vision of
“homeland security”? They are the seven pillars of American
political wisdom:
·Pillar
1— WE THE PEOPLE as the sovereigns, who alone enjoy the authority to
set up or to change the government. This appears explicitly in the
Constitution: “WE THE PEOPLE * * * do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.” This, in turn, results
from the broader principle stated in the Declaration of Independence:
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness.”
·Pillar
2 — WE THE PEOPLE as the electors, who choose individuals to administer
the government from day to day.
·Pillars 3, 4, and 5 — These are WE THE PEOPLE’S agents
for national concerns: Congress, the President, the Supreme Court.
·Pillar 6 — These are WE THE PEOPLE’S agents for local
concerns: the States. Last but not least,
·Pillar 7 — WE THE PEOPLE organized in, and able to act at all
times through, “the Militia of the several States.”
Nowhere
in this structure does the Leader Principle appear. Nowhere. Every
pillar of the Constitution—and of the Declaration of Independence from
which the Constitution draws its authority—is based upon the People
Principle, the principle of self-government by WE THE PEOPLE. In this
structure, public officials are only and always agents, never principals
— strictly speaking, they are only and always followers of
the instructions of others, never true “leaders.”
Edwin
Vieira
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