AMERICAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE FALL by Bruce Fein . . . President Jefferson touted frugality and limited government as the earmarks of enlightened rule: [A] wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. Jefferson even urged a constitutional amendment to prohibit government borrowing. Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (p. 25). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. . . . The Supreme Court held in Clinton v. New York that Congress was constitutionally forbidden from crowning the President with line-item veto power to arrest its own spending prodigality. The Constitution assigned the power of the purse to Congress with the expectation that it would be brandished to arrest executive usurpations or abuses. . . . Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (p. 25). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. . . . In February 2003, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D. Calif.) learned of illegal waterboarding by the Central Intelligence Agency. Waterboarding constitutes the crime of torture in violation of the federal criminal code by creating an imminent fear of death that AMERICAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE FALL by Bruce Fein Page 4 of 17 provokes prolonged mental trauma. She insisted that she was powerless to do anything about it in a press conference on May 14, 2009. But Pelosi could have disclosed the crime with impunity on the floor of Congress within the Speech or Debate Clause protection announced by the Supreme Court in Gravel v. United States (1972). It held that the classified Pentagon Papers could be disclosed by a Senate Committee without fear of reprisal from the executive branch. Pelosi could have introduced legislation prohibiting the expenditure of funds to waterboard detainees; or specifically making waterboarding g a crime; or, creating an independent counsel to investigate and prosecute the crime of waterboarding. But Pelosi choose cowardly silence for partisan political reasons. She wished to avoid making Democrats appear weak on terrorism to the unlearned or uncivilized. She was unmoved by the truism that all that is necessary for the triumph of executive branch evil in the American Empire is for good men and women in Congress to do nothing. Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (pp. 29-30). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. . . . Thomas Paine’s Common Sense explained how Americans responded in the American Revolutionary War and would respond to comparable brutalities today: Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, ‘Come, come, we shall be friends again, for all this.’ But examine the passion and feelings of mankind, Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me, whether you can hereafter love, Empire Without a Cause honour, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon posterity…But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then you are not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant. Matthew Alexander wrote about the blow-back effects of torture under a pseudonym in the Outlook Section of The Washington Post (November 30, 2008). He had served 14 years in the U.S. Air Force and had begun his career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters. He saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, and then volunteered to serve in Iraq as a senior interrogator. Mr. Alexander related: I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly recruiting fighters for Al Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on September 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me—unless you don’t count American soldiers as American. AMERICAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE FALL by Bruce Fein Page 5 of 17 United States military bases that encroach on foreign sovereignty insult national pride and generate animosity or resentment. That explains why the United States was compelled to remove its air force and naval bases at Clark and Subic Bay, respectively, from the Philippines around 1990. A status of forces agreement compounds the indignity of a foreign military base because it customarily grants United States personnel legal immunity from the jurisdiction of the host nation. Even the populations of closely allied countries like Japan and South Korea resent United States bases because off-base crimes like rape or murder by servicemen are inevitable. In 1995, for example, Okinawa, Japan, erupted in outrage when a 12-year old Okinawan girl was raped by three United States soldiers. Is it any wonder that Okinawans are currently fighting a new United States base there to replace the Futema Marine Air Station? Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (pp. 34-36). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. The American Empire honors beauty more than brains, professional sports more than learning, and power more than philosophical wisdom or courage. Never in the history of the United States have so many known so little about so much. Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (p. 39). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle : How Far the Republic Has Fallen — From Lexington and Concord to the Korangal Valley The slogan that government is more the problem than the solution is not a modern invention. It was the insight of James Madison in the Federalist Papers: If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. Also authored by Madison, the Bill of Rights attempts to arrest government power. The First Amendment, for example, prohibits government from infringing on freedom of speech, press, religion, and the right to petition for redress of grievances. It additionally blocks government from sponsoring religion. The Second Amendment prohibits government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. The Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable police searches or seizures and celebrates a right to be left alone. The Fifth Amendment proscribes government takings of property without just compensation. It further condemns deprivations of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or compulsory self-incrimination. The Sixth Amendment prevents government overreaching in criminal prosecutions. It establishes a right to a jury of peers; a right to counsel; a right to confront accusers; a right to call defense witnesses; and, a prohibition on successive prosecutions for the same offense. The Eighth Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishments. The Bill of Rights is emphatically not a prescription for government regulation, welfare programs, bailouts of private enterprise, or otherwise. Indeed, the Constitution eschews imposing on government any affirmative obligations whatsoever, except to pay for private property taken by eminent domain. As for prosperity, the Founding Fathers were guided by the wisdom of Scottish economist Adam Smith writing in 1776: Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavor to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and, to support themselves, are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical. The Constitution, before the Sixteenth Amendment in 1914, denied Congress authority to levy an income tax. The revenues of the federal government were modest, derived largely from tariffs and excise taxes. In 1912, federal revenues were $921 million, and the corresponding budget deficit was $3.5 million. The American Republic renounced Empire in the Constitution’s Preamble. It conspicuously excluded utopian schemes to save the world from tyranny or humanitarian horrors. It cherished above all else a more perfect union featuring the blessings of liberty to Americans, period, with no question marks, commas, or semicolons. Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (pp. 43-44). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. AMERICAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE FALL by Bruce Fein Page 7 of 17 3: The Nation’s Charter Documents The Founding Fathers enshrined their unsurpassed prescience and understanding of human nature in four Charter Documents: the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, President George Washington’s Farewell Address, and then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams’ July 4, 1821 address. Collectively they are the political philosophy of the American Republic. Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (p. 57). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. Madison saw firsthand how the nation’s undeclared war with France in 1798 gave birth to the ill-conceived Alien and Sedition Acts—passed by Congress with a Federalist Party majority and signed into law by President John Adams. The Sedition Act criminalized criticism of the President or Congress in flagrant violation of the First Amendment (while cynically excluding verbal assaults on Vice President Thomas Jefferson, a DemocratRepublican).The Sedition Act punished any person who: shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either House of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States. . . . Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (pp. 65-66). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. Madison’s first-hand experience with the Alien and Sedition Acts as ostensible national security responses to foreign danger informed his sermonizing: “If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.” He added: “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (p. 67). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. The fact that John Adams, a crowning figure amongst the Founding Fathers, would endorse a flagrantly unconstitutional law under the banner of national security exemplifies why the Constitution’s makers entrusted war powers to Congress rather than the executive branch. They realized that presidents would crave and abuse wartime powers powers to secure their political popularity and thus concoct excuses for conflict. . . . Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (pp. 67-68). Campaign for Liberty. Kindle Edition. In contrast to the President, Members of Congress have no incentive for warfare. Members are not Commander in Chief. They do not earn laurels for winning or fighting a war. It does not crown Members with fame, money, secrecy, appointments, or the thrill of seeking a world transformation. Nor does it grant them emergency powers to freeze assets or detain politically unpopular minorities. President Franklin D. Roosevelt earned political kudos for herding 120,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War II. Fein, Bruce (2010-07-07). American Empire Before The Fall (p. 68). Campaign for Liberty I will post the rest tomorrow. I know this is heavy reading but essential to all who care and concern for our liberty and Freedom.-Mark
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 05:29:48 +0000
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