Hard to believe this was written in 1939.
The Criminality of the State
http://mises.org/library/criminality-state
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DECEMBER 29, 2006Albert Jay Nock
TAGS Big GovernmentWar and Foreign PolicyInterventionism
[This essay first appeared in The American Mercury in March 1939.]
As well as I can judge, the general attitude of Americans who are at all interested in foreign affairs is one of astonishment, coupled with distaste, displeasure, or horror, according to the individual observer’s capacity for emotional excitement. Perhaps I ought to shade this statement a little in order to keep on the safe side, and say that this is the most generally expressed attitude.
All our institutional voices — the press, pulpit, forum — are pitched to the note of amazed indignation at one or another phase of the current goings-on in Europe and Asia. This leads me to believe that our people generally are viewing with wonder as well as repugnance certain conspicuous actions of various foreign States; for instance, the barbarous behavior of the German State towards some of its own citizens; the merciless despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State; the “betrayal of CzechoSlovakia” by the British and French States; the savagery of the Japanese State; the brutishness of the Chinese State’s mercenaries; and so on, here or there, all over the globe — this sort of thing is showing itself to be against our people’s grain, and they are speaking out about it in wrathful surprise.
I am cordially with them on every point but one. I am with them in repugnance, horror, indignation, disgust, but not in astonishment. The history of the State being what it is, and its testimony being as invariable and eloquent as it is, I am obliged to say that the naive tone of surprise wherewith our people complain of these matters strikes me as a pretty sad reflection on their intelligence. Suppose someone were impolite enough to ask them the gruff question, “Well, what do you expect?” — what rational answer could they give? I know of none.
Polite or impolite, that is just the question which ought to be put every time a story of State villainy appears in the news. It ought to be thrown at our public day after day, from every newspaper, periodical, lecture platform, and radio station in the land; and it ought to be backed up by a simple appeal to history, a simple invitation to look at the record. The British State has sold the Czech State down the river by a despicable trick; very well, be as disgusted and angry as you like, but don’t be astonished; what would you expect? — just take a look at the British State’s record! The German State is persecuting great masses of its people, the Russian State is holding a purge, the Italian State is grabbing territory, the Japanese State is buccaneering along the Asiatic Coast; horrible, yes, but for Heaven’s sake don’t lose your head over it, for what would you expect? — look at the record!
That is how every public presentation of these facts ought to run if Americans are ever going to grow up into an adult attitude towards them. Also, in order to keep down the great American sin of self-righteousness, every public presentation ought to draw the deadly parallel with the record of the American State. The German State is persecuting a minority, just as the American State did after 1776; the Italian State breaks into Ethiopia, just as the American State broke into Mexico; the Japanese State kills off the Manchurian tribes in wholesale lots, just as the American State did the Indian tribes; the British State practices large-scale carpetbaggery, like the American State after 1864; the imperialist French State massacres native civilians on their own soil, as the American State did in pursuit of its imperialistic policies in the Pacific, and so on.
In this way, perhaps, our people might get into their heads some glimmering of the fact that the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation — that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class — that is, for a criminal purpose.
No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient. In the last analysis, what is the German, Italian, French, or British State now actually doing? It is ruining its own people in order to preserve itself, to enhance its own power and prestige, and extend its own authority; and the American State is doing the same thing to the utmost of its opportunities.
What, then, is a little matter like a treaty to the French or British State? Merely a scrap of paper — Bethmann-Hollweg[i] described it exactly. Why be astonished when the German or Russian State murders its citizens? The American State would do the same thing under the same circumstances. In fact, eighty years ago it did murder a great many of them for no other crime in the world but that they did not wish to live under its rule any longer; and if that is a crime, then the colonists led by G. Washington were hardened criminals and the Fourth of July is nothing but a cutthroat’s holiday.
The weaker the State is, the less power it has to commit crime. Where in Europe today does the State have the best criminal record? Where it is weakest: in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra. Yet when the Dutch State, for instance, was strong, its criminality was appalling; in Java it massacred 9,000 persons in one morning which is considerably ahead of Hitler’s record or Stalin’s. It would not do the like today, for it could not; the Dutch people do not give it that much power, and would not stand for such conduct. When the Swedish State was a great empire, its record, say from 1660 to 1670, was fearful. What does all this mean but that if you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness — which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe — its criminality may be safely got on with.
So it strikes me that instead of sweating blood over the iniquity of foreign States, my fellow-citizens would do a great deal better by themselves to make sure that the American State is not strong enough to carry out the like iniquities here. The stronger the American State is allowed to grow, the higher its record of criminality will grow, according to its opportunities and temptations. If, then, instead of devoting energy, time, and money to warding off wholly imaginary and fanciful dangers from criminals thousands of miles away, our people turn their patriotic fervor loose on the only source from which danger can proceed, they will be doing their full duty by their country.
Two able and sensible American publicists — Isabel Paterson, of the New York Herald Tribune, and W.J. Cameron, of the Ford Motor Company — have lately called our public’s attention to the great truth that if you give the State power to do something for you, you give it an exact equivalent of power to do something to you. I wish every editor, publicist, teacher, preacher, and lecturer would keep hammering that truth into American heads until they get it nailed fast there, never to come loose. The State was organized in this country with power to do all kinds of things for the people, and the people in their short-sighted stupidity, have been adding to that power ever since. After 1789, John Adams said that, so far from being a democracy of a democratic republic, the political organization of the country was that of “a monarchical republic, or, if you will, a limited monarchy”; the powers of its President were far greater than those of “an avoyer, a consul, a podesta, a doge, a stadtholder; nay, than a king of Poland; nay, than a king of Sparta.” If all that was true in 1789 — and it was true — what is to be said of the American State at the present time, after a century and a half of steady centralization and continuous increments of power?
Power, for instance, to “help business” by auctioning off concessions, subsidies, tariffs, land grants, franchises; power to help business by ever encroaching regulations, supervisions, various forms of control. All this power was freely given; it carried with it the equivalent power to do things to business; and see what a banditti of sharking political careerists are doing to business now! Power to afford “relief” to proletarians; and see what the State has done to those proletarians now in the way of systematic debauchery of whatever self-respect and self-reliance they may have had! Power this way, power that way; and all ultimately used against the interests of the people who surrendered that power on the pretext that it was to be used for those interests.
Many now believe that with the rise of the “totalitarian” State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will.
The idea that the State is a social institution, and that with a fine upright man like Mr. Chamberlain at the head of it, or a charming person like Mr. Roosevelt, there can be no question about its being honorably and nobly managed — all this is just so much sticky flypaper. Men in that position usually make a good deal of their honor, and some of them indeed may have some (though if they had any I cannot understand their letting themselves be put in that position) but the machine they are running will run on rails which are laid only one way, which is from crime to crime. In the old days, the partition of CzechosLovakia or the taking-over of Austria would have been arranged by rigmarole among a few highly polished gentlemen in stiff shirts ornamented with fine ribbons. Hitler simply arranged it the way old Frederick arranged his share in the first partition of Poland; he arranged the annexation of Austria the way Louis XIV arranged that of Alsace. There is more or less of a fashion, perhaps, in the way these things are done, but the point is that they always come out exactly the same in the end.
Furthermore, the idea that the procedure of the “democratic” State is any less criminal than that of the State under any other fancy name, is rubbish. The country is now being surfeited with journalistic garbage about our great sister democracy, England, its fine democratic government, its vast beneficent gift for ruling subject peoples, and so on; but does anyone ever look up the criminal record of the British State? The bombardment of Copenhagen; the Boer War; the Sepoy Rebellion; the starvation of Germans by the post-Armistice blockade; the massacre of natives in India, Afghanistan, Jamaica; the employment of Hessians to kill off American colonists. What is the difference, moral or actual, between Kitchener’s democratic concentration camps[ii] and the totalitarian concentration camps maintained by Herr Hitler? The totalitarian general Badoglio[iii] is a pretty hard-boiled brother, if you like, but how about the democratic general O’Dwyer[iv] and Governor Eyre[v]? Any of the three stands up pretty well beside our own democratic virtuoso, Hell Roaring Jake Smith,[vi] in his treatment of the Filipinos; and you can’t say fairer than that.
As for the British State’s talent for a kindly and generous colonial administration, I shall not rake up old scores by citing the bill of particulars set forth in the Declaration of Independence; I shall consider India only, not even going into matters like the Kaffir war or the Wairau incident in New Zealand. Our democratic British cousins in India in the Eighteenth Century must have learned their trade from Pizarro and Cortez. Edmund Burke called them “birds of prey and passage.” Even the directors of the East India Company admitted that “the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country.” Describing a journey, Warren Hastings wrote that “most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach”; the people ran off into the woods at the mere sight of a white man. There was the iniquitous salt monopoly; there was extortion everywhere, practiced by enterprising rascals in league with a corrupt police; there was taxation which confiscated almost half the products of the soil.
If it be said that Britain was not a sister democracy in those days, and has since reformed, one might well ask how much of the reformation is due to circumstances, and how much to a change of heart. Besides, the Black-and-Tans[vii] were in our day; so was the post-Armistice blockade; General O’Dwyer’s massacre was not more than a dozen years ago;[viii] and there are plenty alive who remember Kitchener’s concentration camps.
No, “democratic” State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little more left to learn.
Stripping the American State of the enormous power it has acquired is a full-time job for our citizens and a stirring one; and if they attend to it properly they will have no energy to spare for fighting communism, or for hating Hitler, or for worrying about South America or Spain, or for anything whatever, except what goes on right here in the United States.
Editor’s Notes
[i] Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (November 29, 1856 – January 1, 1921) was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917. He was particularly upset by Britain’s declaration of war following German violation of Belgium’s neutrality in the course of her invasion of France, reportedly asking the departing British Ambassador Goschen how Britain could go to war over a “mere scrap of paper” (the Belgian Neutrality Treaty of 1839).
[ii] Horatio Herbert Kitchener (24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was an Irish-born British Field Marshal, diplomat and statesman. During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Kitchener’s policy was to destory Boer farms and move civilians into concentration camps whose conditions led to wide opprobrium in Britain and Europe.
[iii] General Pietro Badoglio succeeded Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy (Provisional Military Government), from July 25, 1943 to June 18, 1944.
[iv] Sir Michael Francis O’Dwyer (April 1864 – March 13, 1940), was Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab from 1912 to 1919, where he oversaw the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre on April 13, 1919. According to official figures, 379 unarmed civilians were killed by Gurkha troops. Unofficial estimates place the figure much higher, at perhaps 2,000, with many more wounded. In the wake of the massacre O’Dwyer was relieved of his office.
[v] Edward John Eyre (5 August 1815 – 30 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent and a controversial Governor of Jamaica, where he ruthlessly suppressed the Morant Bay Rebellion, and had many black peasants killed. He also authorized the judicial murder of George William Gordon, a mixed-race member of the colonial assembly who was suspected of involvement in the insurrection. These events created great controversy in Britain, leading to calls for Eyre to be arrested and tried for Gordon’s murder. John Stuart Mill organized the Jamaica Committee — comprised of such classical liberals as John Bright and Herbert Spencer — calling for his prosecution. Eyre was twice charged with murder, but the cases never proceeded.
[vi] General Jacob Hurd Smith (1840–1918) was a veteran of the Wounded Knee massacre and well known among Indian campaigners. As brigadier general in charge of the Samar campaign in the Philippine-American War (1899–1913), Smith became infamous for his orders to “kill everyone over the age of ten” and make the island “a howling wilderness.” He was dubbed “Hell Roaring Jake” Smith, “The Monster”, and “Howling Jake” by the newspapers.
[vii] The term “Black and Tans” refers to the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, which was one of two paramilitary forces employed by the Royal Irish Constabulary from 1920 to 1921, to suppress revolution in Ireland by targeting the IRA and Sinn Féin.
[viii] On March 13, 1940 — one year after Nock published this essay — Punjabi revolutionary Udham Singh shot O’Dwyer dead in Caxton Hall in London as an act of revenge for the massacre.
[Both “The Albany Plan Re-Visited” and TAPR 2nd Edition, solve this problem in the section on Federal Authority and Citizenship. Of the three ways to curtail this form of federal criminality, only Secession may be peaceful. The other two require an armed revolution or insurrection as one, and the other is conquest by an outside force. Both are violent, bloody, and expensive. Secession.]
Justplainbill's Weblog 
Open Letter to Pres. Trump, 12/25/25
Suggested Solutions
printed: September 3, 2025
Illegal Aliens:
By definition, an illegal alien is a criminal, all other crimes are add-ons to the original crime of breaching the immigration laws, thus, various categories should be addressed in order to provide for a reasonable solution. Many categories are compounded by the over-matching of the different enforcement agencies, for example, the tax violations with the social security violations with the actual criminal violations, &c.
Two major categories are the economic violations coupled with the tax violations. As such, we may separate those who have not committed criminal misconduct, such as murder +/or trespass, phrased simply as felonies and misdemeanors. Thus, we can separate these two groups of criminals by using current definitions and apply the appropriate, political, judicial, and social, remedies, that should satisfy all reasonable people, although triggering the ideologues.
Keeping in mind, that all solutions to this problem are legislative with the only power of The Executive being to implement Law. See Article I and Article II of The Constitution of the United States 1788 as amended.
Simple illegals who have crossed and have been model citizens, with jobs, no criminal record other than false or stolen social security numbers +/or other simple identity frauds, excepting those of actual identity theft, and with the intent to assimilate, should be paroled.
All others should be prosecuted and either imprisoned or executed as appropriate to their crimes and the pertinent statutes. There should be NO exceptions, as this violates the current interpretations of the various discrimination decisions, especially those based on place of birth, race, national origin, and gender. To allow these criminals to remain without punishment discriminates against both legal residents and citizens of These United States. This policy eliminates the problem of deportations, as all of the crimes are inherently within the jurisdiction of the United States and its member States, and as such, imprisonment in local facilities is appropriate, not deportation until such time as the court ordered sentence is complete, and even then, the deportation should be immediate, as in within 24 hours. Although requiring an increase in prison facilities, overall, it should reduce the cost of this problem.
In order to be paroled, the illegal alien must admit to having committed the breach of the immigration laws, thus allowing for the court ordering a parole for the individual, much as a criminal consent decree. This required admission of guilt allows for the constitutionality of all of the following. Apparent conflicts between guidelines to be modified at the discretion of the Executive in the event that the legislation is ambiguous, but definitely not to be adjudicated by any Article I nor Article III nor any State’s court
Criminals: all crimes committed within the Jurisdiction of These United States shall be adjudicated within the U.S., applying all pertinent statues and rules with the exception that no bail or bond shall be applied, but only incarceration up to the penalty hearing shall apply.
At no time shall an Illegal Alien have the citizen’s Right to Bail, as the risk of flight +/or repeat offenses is historically at or near 99.9999% as can be humanly determined. The history of allowing Bail is that the accused is not a risk for flight or repeat offenses, whereas the Illegal Alien is already a criminal, and by definition a flight risk to flee to foreign lands and by definition has no community ties to the U.S., as he is, by legal definition as established by The Supreme Court of the United States, an alien. For whom is covered by the U.S. Constitution, one may go back to the Dred Scott Decision; Scott vs Davis, according to Shepard’s, still a good ruling, although modified.
The Camp LeJeune Justice Act
How to screw Veterans while pretending tort restitution
Several years ago, The Congress, passed The Camp LeJeune Justice Act. It is based on the fact that from the late 1950’s through the late 1980’s, the water in the aquifer and Base water system was contaminated with dry cleaning fluids and aviation fuel from deteriorating WW II fuel tanks. Troops, dependents, and contractors have all suffered cancers, neurological diseases, death, and the typical tort damage of pain and suffering. The generals and responsible congressional committees having full knowledge of same. In The Act, Congress admits to total liability for these and other damages, waiving sovereign immunity.
Among congress’s errors and exacerbated by the federal judiciary and the Department of the Navy and the Department of Justice, is their failure to apply the Federal Torts Claims Act’s limitation on contingency fees. The FTCA limits fees to 10%. Currently, the thousands of claimants, are required to pay a range of 33% to 60% depending upon the locale of the law firm “handling” the case. Thus, the injured party will not receive an amount commensurate with the damages. To further add injury to the petitioner, is the fact that the local court has consolidated the filings into the hands of a small number of law firms, if information is correct, Wallace & Graham, of North Carolina, thus, most of these plaintiff’s lawyers will be unjustly enriched at the expense of the injured parties as their only legal activity will be to have filed the original petition, yet W&G will be doing almost all of the actual legal work and not getting paid.
Another problem is that the local judge decided to violate the VIIth Amendment by denying petitioners a jury trial in a Civil Case. The judge has decided that all on his own, he can determine all damages including the pain and suffering of everyone, including family members of those damaged, without the input of a jury nor of the victims. Bench trials being notorious for ignoring pain and suffering, as a matter of course.
Next is that both the DOJ and DON haven’t hired enough lawyers to handle these cases. Rumor has it that the Biden Administration simply ignored all budget requests for this matter. However, considering how many lawyers are in the JAG Reserves, these people could handle the bulk of the paper work on their weekends of ‘service’ and two weeks of ‘active’ duty.
Both the DOJ and DON, rumor again has it, have stalled to the point that the judge has threatened sanctions and censure over the course of the case. Hasn’t done so yet, of course.
In order to ease their own burden at the expense of the victims, DON has put out a schedule of payments for those who will drop their participation in exchange for immediate cash. A review of this schedule shows how DON is ignoring most rules of a tort claim by simply saying if you fall into this category, regardless of how injured you are or the complexity of the claim, we’ll pay you, right now, this six figure amount. DON hereby ignores how a victim may have multiple cancers, neurological diseases, injuries, loss of wages, pain & suffering, &c, but, hey, the judge is ok with all of this. By stalling, they’ve gotten away with avoiding numerous claims. Further, how many settled just to get it over with, and still had to pay 33 – 60% in contingency fees to those who have done nothing to earn it?
With the contingency fee rates as they are, in order for a veteran to receive reasonable compensation, the minimum claim should be settled for no less than $3,000,000.
Victims are dying daily, claims are being lost, and where is the justice for veterans? Somebody at DOD, DON, or Justice needs to get on this ASAP.
Education
The Not Department Thereof
The Bureaucratic Process at both the State and Federal levels are, except for the degree of corruption, in the moral sense, the same. A Legislature enacts block payments to the various educational districts, generally based on student attendance. Did you never wonder why attendance is taken at the beginning of every single class, every single day, wasting the first ten to fifteen minutes of each fifty minute ‘teaching/learning period’? Payment is for attendance and not learning goals. Much of the bureaucracy is simply supervision over the paperwork of attendance. Notwithstanding Teachers’ Unions claims as to a building’s fitness, school supplies, &c., monies paid are all determined by attendance.
This is a carryover from the 18th Century, one room brick school-house where the one teacher was paid per student and the local community taxed, or in many cases, the parents were required to pay for this service, based on the number of children sent to school, then upon residential land values. Note that Judeo-Christian Parochial schools, still charge the parent per child, or the parent gets a scholarship from the local parish or community support groups, as these schools do not discriminate. Madrassas do the same, but unlike the others, only accept Muslim children. They are not open to the general public.
If implied, the parochial schools also assist in getting Public Assistance for the family. Yet, in addition to these costs, the parents are still required to pay taxes to support public schools to which they have no contact and from whom they receive no benefit and from which, according to recent audits, have failed miserably to teach reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic, concentrating on the Green Hoax, DEI and CRT. Note how Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is required viewing in California Public Schools as science.
Experience suggests that school boards are merely steppingstones for the politically ambitious and are simply a testing ground for political correctness, thus having nothing to do with educating the children, but as a way for directing tax dollars to the appropriate entities. An example in Platte County MO is how in the Park Hill School District, Park Hill South High School was designed by a board member’s bubba, an architect who mostly designs prisons, and thus, how PHS looks and feels like a prison rather than an institute of learning.
A scam created by citizen indifference to history.
Further, it has been estimated that like hospital beds, over 30% of students are in private schools, and thus, tax funded schools are not carrying their ‘fair share’ of the educational burden, while in fact gaining 100% of the proceeds for duties and obligations for which they are not fulfilling. Many of these private schools are failing for lack of adequate funding, Kew-Forest among them.
Oddly enough, before LBJ’s Great Society, New York City and New York State had a system that was admired and followed by many other districts. They had a standardized City-wide testing program, and NYS a Regents Program, the corpses of each are still in existence, which ignored all discriminating factors thereby laying a very level playing field for all. Such field was demolished by the racist Affirmative Action programs, implying that the ‘under-classes’ are incapable of learning at the same level as the ‘privileged’. As proven by the likes of Charles Payne, Jason Riley, Thomas Sowell, PhD, Rev M. L. King, jr., ThD, and many others, not only was/is this position false, but it gave rise to a privileged underclass of superior beings and have passed fortunes onto race-baiters like Al Sharpton.
See Ludwig von Mises, Fredrick Hayek, James Q. Wilson, Ralph Raico, Leonard Read, &c for actual, reasoned research and analysis of the negative aspects of raising one group above all others and how it diminishes and punishes the diminished groups. Hayek’s Economics in One Lesson, and Read’s Freedom in One Lesson are available at www.mises.org .
Currently, NYS has three levels of ‘acceptable’ secondary school achievement. First is the General Education Diploma (G.E.D.), then the General High School Diploma (where the student actually attended the physical building but whose level of achievement is the same as the G.E.D.) and the Regents’ Diploma, where students actually take the very watered down tests of the NYS Department of Education. Through the NYS legislature, NYS Supreme Court of Appeals, and SCOTUS, all three are to be treated as equal.
Thus, the cure involves two very distinct approaches. First, education, second, the bureaucracy itself. The Bureaucratic solution is applicable to most; non-police power bureaucracies.
The Federal Department of Education should do just that. It should set a world-wide standard, using standardized blind testing, for K-12, with a sub-bureaucracy for both higher education and skill sets. The testing should be voluntary & open, but any employer, trade, regulated skill, or other activity requiring a minimum standard, such as a driver’s license, barbering, massage, electrician, plumber, school teacher, attorney, &c., may require the certification of such a Federal Standard, be a basic employment requirement or for use of public roads or facilities without having to worry about lawsuits from various, mostly racist, special interest groups. A current example is the requirement for lawyers to take the Multi-State exam as well as the State bar exam.
Note how SCOTUS forced States to enforce the 55mph speed limit or not get Federal funds, reasoning still applicable and used today to limit Federalism.
Testing could be given on a quarterly basis using the military reserves to administer them on their weekend/two week active duty dates. Using the Reserves should eliminate any bias or cheating that bureaucratic administrators will be prone to do.
By keeping all of this grant money, the bureaucracy will be reduced, costs will be reduced, and student proficiency increased. The works of Thomas Sowell and Jason Riley show this to be so.
The Judiciary
The Injustice thereof
In direct violation of the VIIth Amendment, The Congress passed the Federal Arbitration Act. Businesses of all sorts, most notably Wall Street Firms, have clauses in their contracts of adhesion requiring the customer to agree to arbitration rather than their constitutional right to a civil jury trial. The automotive industry used these until The States started enacting consumer protection and various Lemon Laws.
The wonderful federal judiciary has ruled that the un-bargained for relinquishment of our right to a jury trial is quite acceptable because the customer can always not accept the contract. Of course, since the only way to access these services is through these businesses, this is a legal falsehood and quite contrary to the debates on the constitution in 1787 wherein such arbitrariness and injustice are referred to as The Spanish Trial, a reference to the Spanish Inquisition. For reference, see The Debate On the Constitution, Bernard Bailyn, editor, © 1993, Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., ISBN978-0-940450-42-4, Vols I + II.
In the financial industry, access is necessary for one to manage one’s 401(k), or other retirement plan, or any self-directed account, thus the ‘clauses freely entered into’ is a blatant lie and legal fiction designed to save the judiciary from actually having to know something beyond the basic Federal Rules of Evidence and the Federal Rules of Procedure (mostly criminal with some judges actually being familiar with civil procedure) and to favor, especially in State Courts, donors to/of political campaigns and issues.
Arbitrators being mostly failed judge ‘wannabees,’ not only know little law, less procedure, and with the knowledge that arbitration awards are un-appealable to a real court or jury, generally practice either the ‘split the baby’, a la King Solomon, or ignore everything except to grant the big money’s position. Trump Industries experiences with labor and contract arbitrations bear this out.
Eliminating, or threatening to eliminate, FINRA, &c., grants the administration several political advantages.
Firstly, all of these cases will be shifted to the Federal Courts. This will reduce the cost of these cases, for although more Federal Judges will need to be appointed, the overall administrative costs will be reduced, with only a small addition to the FedCrt administrative staff.
Secondly, this will allow the administration to suggest that, unlike ‘court packing’, the increase in the workload will require two or four additional associate justices to be added to the Supreme Court of the United States. Jonathon Turley, Mark Levin, Pamela Bondi, and Jeanine Pirro will make exceptional additions to the court.
In order to prevent such nonsense as the recent J-6 prosecutions, jury selection could be:
There are a few other points to make, but they should be addressed in a private, secure conference.
Elections
Un-Democracy
Although Gerrymandering is a current talking point, the actual problems are more complex and evil. Originally, The Founders gave the Federal Franchise only to certain property owners and men, thereby giving only approximately ten percent of the citizenry, not residents, the franchise. The Roman Senate refused to give the vote to the plebes stating, “give the plebes the right to vote, they will vote for bread and circuses, to the detriment of the Republic, every time.” A lesson they learned from the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars.
The evil of the current system manifests in the Single Issue policy vote as well as in the over-representation of various groups and the under-representation of others, mostly on racial lines. The fact that both the politicians and bureaucrats are helping themselves to the treasury, Fauci and Pelosi are fair examples, although evil in and of itself, an inherent characteristic of all such institutions, is actually less harmful than the social and cultural damage done to a civilization than the moves toward the tyrannical control of the people and the destruction of the national character. See Prof. Dr. Victor D. Hanson’s recent op-ed in the NY Post.
Examples throughout history are extant. Just in the last one hundred and fifty years, we have the various bureaucracies creating the Boer War, U.S. colonial expansion, WW I, the creation and extinction of the Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, Hitler, Mussolini, WW II, &c. All, as noted by historians like Murray Rothbard, Ralph Raico, Shelby Foote, and Joseph Schumpeter, from the causes of narcissistic selfishness to the detriment of individual advancement. The bureaucracies creating war and chaos for personal gain, while producers pay the price in death and lost wealth.
With Gerrymandering, whomever can get out specific activists in a district, will win the election. Frequently, using mostly fear tactics, the exalted single view washes out the necessary general policies that would benefit all citizens, such as lower taxes or standardizing educational goals.
Two such single issues are how Colorado and Missouri came to be marijuana protectorates, and how almost 40% of Gen Z and Millennials have been murdered in the womb. If 1/3 of a generation had died in war or by disease, the Media furor would overwhelm this country, if not the world. However, the votes approving the psychoses and cancers, caused by this plant, and the murders of babies, have been approved mostly by making them single issues, thereby overcoming the common sense of the majority. Note how when such single issues are placed on the ballot, intermittent voters come out to vote and vote the straight party line, regardless of whatever other issues are at stake.
There are several issues with Voting Rights which need to be addressed, and not all are commented on anywhere, not even on Joe Rogan, even though they’ve been around for centuries and advanced by such groups as the Academicians and the Levelers.
All voting districts start with an approved and verified voter registration roll. Judicial Watch has litigated this matter, and all that need be said here is that States, for example Colorado, where corrupted rolls have been proven, have generally ignored the Court’s order to clean things up, by pointing to the legislature saying that they need funding to do this, and the Legislature will not provide it. Thus, corrupted voting continues and the courts will not sanction or hold in contempt, these officials.
Dishonest “loose ballots,” although extant, is a problem easily dismissed.
When the Poll-Sitters arrive at their precincts, ballots, already counted and accounted for by the pertinent Election Commission, are re-counted for accuracy and accountability. The Registration Rolls, printed in some places, now mostly electronic, are tested for use. During the day, audits are made as to how many have voted and how many ballots are on hand and how many are registered in the ballot box.
At the end of day, ALL sitters gather around the ballot box as it is emptied, and the cast ballots are placed in a medium sized cardboard box and the box is SEALED AND ALL OF THE SITTERS SIGN THE SEAL! Thus, in order to get a loose ballot, the box and seal must be broken into. Election Laws are such that two sitters, one from each party, must take these boxes of cast votes directly to the Commission Offices, no deviation from the less than 15 minute predetermined route, and delivered and audited again at the commission office.
Exceptions, such as early voting, until COVID, required the voter to go to the commission’s office, show proof of identity, and early vote there before the administrators. Those with mobility issues can request that an official take a ballot to their residence for early voting or arrive at the polling place and a sitter go out to the parking lot and prove the voter’s identity and then allow them to vote while sitting in their car.
Mail-in, identity questionable, voting has allowed for the security video of the woman taking in two suitcases of unverified “loose ballots” to be counted there in Georgia. An obvious and flagrant breach of law, dismissed by a biased and corrupted court, with no accountability for the corrupt official either for voting fraud or for perjury of their oath of office.
During my 25 years as a poll-sitter, I have had numerous incidents of attempted voter fraud.
Much of these and other voting issues may be corrected by implementing two inter-dependent reforms.
First, equality in district.
Place a hexagonal grid over the globe with its start point at the real North Pole. The size of the hex may be determined by taking any standard Metropolitan Demographic Area that includes approximately 400,000 people, such as around Columbia SC. Each hexagon now becomes one congressional district. Borders will of necessity cross state and county lines, thereby reducing geographic and local biases. This is a good thing. This will force all within the hexagon to view everyone else within the hex to view ALL national issues as one which each and every one of them must consider, and more importantly, as each relates to each of them. Race, gender, wealth, education, &c all become reduced in the face of the overall, National Interest.
The hexagons, in and of themselves, are, obviously, insufficient, even though completely fair and honest.
Second, weighted voting.
In order to make this work, once sitting in The Congress, each representative’s vote must be weighted, as the Senate was originally designed to be.
Each Representative’s vote shall only count as to how many votes he received in his election. Let’s be honest, I live in Colorado and not one of my congressional delegation has in all the years that I have lived here, not once that I can remember, voted for my best interest, (Hickenlooper, Bennett, and Crow). Yet, not only does each claim to be working for me, that each claims to “represent me”, each has worked to raise my taxes and reduce my government services all of the time increasing their own personal hoards without earning it.
This policy means that if the representative in the Rhode Island district receives 100 votes and his district contains only 110 eligible voters, yet the Denver district representative receives 90 votes even though there are 500 eligible voters in Denver, the RI Representative and his constituents, because they are united, will have a greater input to national issues and to impact national policies. By being united, the benefit to the national interest is obvious. The tyranny of the single-issue voter is substantially reduced if not eliminated completely. This will force ALL to take an interest in the National Interest.
For those who would object to this direct weighting, a mitigating formula leveling weights out could be created.
As old as these two policies are, dating farther back than Rome and Athens, and more efficacious and realistic & honest than any current democracy or tyranny, as other than talking points or bargaining chips they have almost no current practical value to a politician. However, as to that, these are big chips against the false claims of ‘fair share,’ ‘social justice’, and ‘wealth gap equity.’
Under Federalism and the hex/weight system, we can leave the States’ and Local Governments alone to find their own levels.
Also, the financial situation will change drastically. These changes would force the States to finance themselves or join in regional compacts with their neighbors, as many do in sharing forensic labs and police/fire services. It would stop the current situation of 40% or more each of these states’ budget being based on receiving Federal tax dollars. Just look at how much Federal money is going to California and Puerto Rico. One with no water to fight fires and a multi-billion fast rail boondoggle, and the other a bureaucracy so corrupt that the FBI is unable to operate to find out who is doing what to whom and where any of this federal tax money is actually going.
The only process currently acceptable to the general population for curing this problem is Voter I.D. coupled to paper ballots. Sad, but true, as the Hex/Weight actually gets to the issue of issues, but such a plan will always be opposed by professional politicians and their owners.
The Right to Bear Arms
2nd Amendment Reality
Earlier, reference was made to the Debates on the Constitution wherein much of this issue lies. Under no circumstances, including those of magazine limitations and extra taxation, may any government limit the possession of a rifle or pistol, if the reasoning of The Founders is to be followed. Here, in Colorado, there is a 6.5% extra tax on firearms and ammunition. There is a magazine capacity limit. There are attempts to put additional unconstitutional limits and burdens on honest citizens to Bear Arms.
The Debates are quite clear: the purposes of the Militia, the military arms of the various States, are twofold. One, to protect the citizens of each state from the depredations of the other States & the Natives, and two, to protect the States from the depredations of THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT, which at the time of the Founding, was expressly forbidden a Standing Army. When President Washington went to put down The Whiskey Rebellion, he had to ask the States to call up their various Militias so that he’d have an Army.
These two purposes have not changed.
However, The Congress, in 5 U.S. Code, has a legal definition of who is in the “unorganized” Militia. Makes for interesting reading as it, last I looked, states that as a matter of law, all able-bodied males between the ages of 16 and 48, elected officials and other government personnel excepted, are the National Militia! The interesting part of this is that in order to be the Militia, one MUST HAVE basic rifle skills, know the Landing Party Manual, and have basic infantry skills. To see what these are, one need only look to the Swiss Army where one must show up once a year with his rifle and demonstrate that it is in good working condition. Basic training is in their late teens.
These standards would require a functioning rifle in the possession of every able-bodied male in the country under penalty of charge of felonious neglect to duty, and the standard six months of active-duty service to acquire the other necessary skills. Bluntly, these skills are met at the time a boy/girl scout reaches the second-class level. Completion must be at the ‘honorable and satisfactory’ standard.
A further point in here is, should this universality be extended, because of Equal Rights and its gender discrimination, be it required that women be included in the un-organized Militia?
Foreign Affairs and Entanglements
Well, dang, other than keeping in mind that Xi, Putin, Modi, the Ayatollahs, Maduro, the Castros, the cartels, Kim, &c hate us and want to destroy us, y’all doin’ a damn fine job!
Finance
Fiat Money & Policies
The real danger in doing away with cash and going to Crypto or “plastic” lies in the facts that crypto relies on electricity and has no real value other than a bookkeeping entry on a server. Plastic is bookkeeping purporting to have a real relationship with wealth. Value is subject to government interference and financier greed. Still, it is controlled by electricity and serviced by humans who, in some cases, are corrupt and will “hack” the system to their own perceived benefit. Review how the PRC and its CCP control the population by having this master system. Tick-off a CCP bureaucrat, and he’ll close your bank account. No food or rent money for you. No travel papers or permits for you. No clothes, &c. A hidden point here is that those Illegal Alien Gottaways from China? Does any thinking person really believe that they got out of China w/o the CCP’s approval? Where one needs travel papers to go across the street, get on a bus, a taxi, &c?
Doing away with pennies or otherwise continuing along the debasing currency path is, historically, a bad thing. Too many books have been written about this; an easy currently available read is Rothbard’s What has Government done to our Money? ISBN 978-1-61016-770-3. Bad money always chases out good money. And, doing away with pennies means that all prices will go up 4¢, a modest increase, but still inflationary.
One of several solutions includes the elimination of Federal Reserve Notes. It is possible to replace them with precious metals notes. The PMNotes would not be for cash, but for exact troy weights. The lesser amounts could be made in the same fashion as goldbacks and the larger weights be redeemable, at a premium, through normal banking procedures. Goldbacks, silverbacks, copperbacks, would become currency, and the others act as notes of transfer. Goldbacks as a National Currency would be maintained in a similar fashion as Crypto, plus having serial numbers the same as Federal Reserve Notes.
Five States have already made goldbacks legal currency: Nevada, New Hampshire, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Utah.
As to the specious claims of scarcity, NASA has reported a gold nugget out around Mars, consisting of more gold than there is of minable iron located and found on the surface of the Earth. If NASA doesn’t get there first, China or India will and the global economy will collapse. Musk, Bezos, et al, should be encouraged, and maybe contracted to start mining space. BTW, operations for this would be on the Moon, and shipped economically to Earth via the gravity differential. Put a silk farm in a hydroponics cave for parachutes thus not needing polyester, mine lunar iron, put in a small steel mill, and a magnetic gun, and shipping all of the finished products from the moon now becomes both feasible and economical.
First one there will win.
Coinage, that which is generally referred to as loose change, is another method of debasing the currency and forcing the general population into the electronic prison of a tyrannical bureaucracy. In your lifetime, you have seen and noticed how silver has been removed and replaced by copper, iron, or lead. It has been pointed out how expensive the manufacturing of coins is. This is being used as an excuse when it would be less costly to change the manufacturing process.
Another unacceptable Federal Policy has been to stop requiring banks to take coins as money. The Fed has allowed the banks to eliminate coin counting machines. The Banks now require anyone trying to deposit or convert coin to paper to bring in the coins pre-rolled. It has created an industry of usury. In order to convert coin to paper, one must go to a vending machine which charges 99¢ to access, then keeps 12.5% (1/8!) of the total as its fee!
Debasing the currency always leads to the Weimar Republic and its subsequent tyranny.
Debasing the currency and doing away with cash is a surefire way of eliminating Freedom.
Well, I suppose that this is enough for now, if y’all want to visit or contact me, there are at least two confidential items of interest to you, and not just maybe, contact and I.D. was included in the FEDEX package sent to Ms Wiles, Mr Miller and yourself back in October.
Respectfully,
www.justplainbill.wordpress.com
suggested reading list/bibliography available upon request