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HOKA HEY!
PART 3

 

 

 

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
June 12, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

Other forms of oppression the Plains Indians suffered should serve as object lessons to contemporary Americans.

(ii) The Establishment of the late 1800s deceived the Plains Indians politically through numerous "treaties" that the Great Father in Washington imposed on the Tribes but never honored. Similarly, through its phony "two"-party system, the present-day Establishment has stripped Americans of electoral power to regain control of their country's economic system and thus their own lives in their own land. This disability is not primarily a matter of rigged elections. Even where elections are scrupulously honest, the results do not matter. The names and party labels of the politicians who are voted in or out may change, but the policies they eventually enact into law do not. As their forebears did with the Indians, contemporary politicians make innumerable "treaties" with common Americans�platforms of political parties, pledges by candidates, promises of officeholders�the vast majority of which none of them has the least intention of honoring.

Even more revealing than this deceitful conduct in general is that modern politicians say nothing at all about reforming�or even investigating the shaky performance of�the monetary and banking systems in particular. Neither the "two" parties, nor their nominees for high office, nor politicians once elected make any promises about money and banking (except, perhaps, that they will urge the Federal Reserve System to expand "credit," thereby exacerbating the problem). None of them questions the legality or expediency of the Federal Reserve System and its special privilege to create "credit" and "currency" out of debt. And none of them proposes to return the country to constitutional "Money" of silver and gold (as Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 requires), to rein in "fractional-reserve banking," or otherwise to establish a system of sound money and honest banking on free-market principles. This calculated reticence exposes whose interests the "two" parties really serve.

(iii) The Establishment of the late 1800s generally reviled the Plains Indians' religion, on the ground that it offended the mainstream Christianity of that era. In dealing with white men, the Indians' only recourse was to petition the Great Father in Washington, not the Master of Life (often interpreted by white men as "the Great Spirit") to whom even Christians believed the Great Father was subject. Foresighted Christians (as well as all other monotheists) should have taken no comfort from this, because in less than a century the Establishment came openly to revile Christianity, too�and aggressively to deprive common Americans of any appeal to religion in public affairs, perforce of radical "separation of church and state." Many individuals assume that this dogma is intended only to stop theological bickering among different religious sects from spilling over into practical politics. Its real purpose, however, is far less benign.

For the modern Establishment, the only "law" is "positive law"�that is, "law" enacted in some statute, or declared in some judicial opinion. No "higher law" of any kind exists by which to judge the legitimacy�and especially the illegitimacy�of "positive law." This belief plainly negates the principles set out in the Declaration of Independence, that Americans are entitled to "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them"; that "all men * * * are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"; that "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"; 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"; and that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations * * * evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

To the contemporary Establishment, however, that contradiction is of scant moment. Indeed, where the Establishment is concerned, outright denial of the Declaration's tenets is the order of the day. To set up its New World Order, the Establishment must deny America's national independence. To that end, it must deny that Americans are entitled "to assume among the powers of the earth" a "separate and equal station"�and assert instead that their incumbent government can tell them so. To that end, the Establishment must deny both that "unalienable Rights" set limits to governmental power, and that, to be legitimate, governmental authority must encompass "just powers" only. To that end, it must deny Americans the right to choose their own form of government�and, in particular, the right to change the form of their government when public officeholders threaten their liberties and prosperity. Above all, the Establishment must deny the very existence of any "higher law"�"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"�to which the people can appeal from all these other denials.

This complex of negations has long been the rule where money and banking are concerned. As a medium of exchange intended for free and honest men, true "money" self-evidently rests on a "higher law" that binds individuals, private banks, and governments: Thou shalt not steal. Doubtlessly, that inherent connection between function and precept led the Framers of the Constitution to set out Congress's power "[t]o coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin" in the selfsame provision that contains its power to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 5). This juxtaposition teaches, as a matter of constitutional principle, that "Money" cannot be suffered to be dishonest, any more than "Weights and Measures" can.

Yet the recent history of money and banking in America�which must be described as political history, because it can claim next to no basis in constitutional law�is rife with dishonesty. For example, where "Money" is concerned:

  • In the 1930s Congress removed gold coin from the monetary system�not "coin[ing] Money" (as the Constitution requires), but uncoining it.
  • In the 1960s Congress debased America's silver coinage�not honestly "regulating the Value" of "Money," but falsifying it. And,
  • Today, Congress declares paper "currency" to be "legal tender" for all debts, even though all such "currency" is absolutely irredeemable in gold or silver. See Title 31, United States Code, Sections 5103 and 5118(b and c).

Similarly, where banking is concerned, Congress licenses "forced savings." Apparently, this is predicated on the assumption that, by redistributing real wealth from average Americans to the bankers and their clients through the emission of new "credit" and "currency," this country will experience greater "economic growth"�and, derivatively, the tax bureaucracies can rake in larger revenues�than if that wealth were left in the possession of the people who actually earned it. (On an analogous theory, in the Kelo case the Supreme Court erased constitutional protections for private property against direct seizure by eminent domain.) Of course, such reasoning would rationalize every variety of dishonest weights and measures, too�because imposing "forced savings" on Americans by short-changing them on goods would also leave more real tangible wealth in the hands of special interests purportedly better able to use it.

(iv) The Establishment of the late 1800s assaulted the Plains Indians with the systematic immigration of aggressive, acquisitive white settlers, and incursions by avaricious miners and buffalo hunters, into Tribal lands�all too many of these invasions being illegal, at the least because they violated outstanding treaties. The tactic of conquest through immigration was intended, not simply to despoil the Indians of their lands, but also to destroy them as independent peoples, by denying them the very territory and resources that alone could support their traditional way of life�leaving them with no alternative except to give up their political, economic, and cultural institutions, and be absorbed into an alien society. Unless they forcibly resisted the settlers and other trespassers�in which case the Tribes were subjected to punitive campaigns by the Army aimed at their extermination.

Contemporary Americans are victims of the same tactic. Today's massive illegal immigration is no accident, but an agenda; not something about which public officeholders can do nothing, but as to which they are intentionally facilitating everything. If the present-day Establishment cannot deprive the generality of common Americans of their land and their way of life in the straightforward way the Indians were dispossessed, it can and has set about demolishing their traditional culture�economic, social, and political�through an all-out attack of "multiculturalism" in which illegal immigrants serve as shock troops. The goal is to destroy America's national independence�her "separate and equal station" "among the powers of the earth"�first by merger of all the countries in the Northern Hemisphere; followed by merger of all the countries in the Western Hemisphere; and completed by globalization.

The means are floods of aliens who, by failing or refusing to assimilate, will deprive America of a cohesive national identity and integrity. Economically, massive illegal immigration provides a cheap and submissive work force, in order to lower the general American standard of living (even more than exportation of jobs is already doing), and thereby grease the economic skids for a regional merger with Mexico. Socially, massive illegal immigration sows division, dissension, and conflict, and sets up opportunities for the Establishment to employ "divide-and-conquer" tactics, so that Americans will not stand shoulder-to-shoulder in defense of national sovereignty. And politically, massive illegal immigration infests this country with people who know and care nothing about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in particular, or constitutionalism in general, and thus dilute the influence of those who still do. All this will lay the groundwork for a Caesaristic police state, because that is the only form of "government" most illegal immigrants have ever known; that is what they will assume prevails here, too; that is what they will expect of "government;" and at length that is what they will help to make of it.

The monetary lesson this situation teaches is clear. Most illegal immigrants come from countries with no constitutional tradition of sound money, and certainly no recent experience with it. For such people, in comparison to the media of exchange they knew in their native lands Federal Reserve Notes are "hard currency!" And the "solution" they have almost always seen their leaders apply to economic and political problems at home has been rampant inflation of "currency" and "credit." Vanishingly small, then, will be the likelihood that here they will align themselves with Americans who press for a return to constitutional money and banking. Rather, they will demand more of that to which they have been accustomed. And,

(v) The Establishment of the late 1800s would have totally disarmed the Plains Indians had the situation warranted it. For native Tribesmen with a tradition of waging war who had recently proven their mettle in numerous engagements could not be systematically dispossessed and oppressed if left with adequate means to fight back. And such a policy could easily have been rationalized on the ground that, as euphemistic "wards" of the United States�or, more realistically, as conquered, subjugated, and dependent peoples stripped of their sovereignty�the Indians had no right to arms. Pervasive "gun control" never proved necessary in that era, however, because so few warriors remained to claim their ancestral prerogatives by wager of battle. Contemporary Americans pose a far more difficult problem for the present-day Establishment.

Far from being mere dependent "wards" of the United States, legally subject to politicians' whims, Americans�in the Constitution's first and most important words, "We the People"�are this country's earthly sovereigns, who have reserved to themselves "the right * * * to keep and bear Arms" on the ground that "[a] well regulated Militia[ is] necessary to the security of a free State" (Amendment II). Moreover, although most common Americans share no particular tradition as warriors of recent memory, tens of millions of them now possess and know how to use firearms well enough to be potentially dangerous to aspiring usurpers and tyrants. Therefore, inasmuch as the Establishment intends to eliminate America's national sovereignty, which resides in We the People�and inasmuch as arms have always been throughout Western history the primary indicia of, and means for retaining, sovereignty�the Establishment must at some stage in the not-too-distant future attempt to employ pervasive "gun control" to strip common Americans of the arms that symbolize, and in a crisis could be used to claim and confirm, their sovereignty. Doubtlessly, the Establishment plans to achieve this goal through the paramilitarized National police state it is setting up under the guise of "homeland security."

The relation of this situation to money and banking is plain enough. The two great powers of government are the Power of the Sword and the Power of the Purse�in that order. In his Discourses on Livy, Macchiavelli exploded the shibboleth that "gold forms the sinews of war," with his commonsensical observation that "gold cannot always find good soldiers, but good soldiers can always find gold." This insight Mao Tse-tung confirmed in the dictum he drew from experience, that "[p]olitical power grows out of the barrel of a gun": For the Power of the Purse is a political power; and if (as with all other political power) it "grows out of the barrel of a gun," then the Power of the Sword must be its antecedent and superior. Moreover, the Second Amendment codifies this relationship as a principle of American constitutional law: For if "[a] well regulated Militia [is] necessary to the security of a free State," and the Power of the Purse is a power of such a State, then "[a] well regulated Militia[ is] necessary" for "the security," and ultimately the exercise, of the Power of the Purse�making the Power of the Purse dependent upon the Power of the Sword.

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So, should the Establishment ever succeed in disarming common Americans, their hopes for sound money and honest banking would be dashed on the rocks of despair. Based on economic theory, it is a near certainty that, absent extensive reforms, the present regime of fictitious "currency" and "credit" will collapse. Based on America's own political experience, a very strong possibility exists that, absent Militia "organiz[ed], arm[ed], and disciplin[ed]" and "call[ed] forth to execute the Laws" as the Constitution mandates (Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16), a financial dictatorship will take over in response to the ensuing chaos. (Indeed, on a small scale this is exactly what happened from 1932 to 1934, with the implosion of the Federal Reserve System and the installation of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the central policy of which was to "go off the gold standard"�that is, to empower bankers and politicians to expand the supplies of unsound "currency" and "credit" more than ever before). And, based on the adage that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," the likelihood that such a dictatorship, on its own initiative, will ever relinquish power to We the People and return this country to constitutional standards asymptotically approaches zero for as long as the dictatorship persists. For part 4 click below.

Click here for part ----- 1, 2, 4,

[TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK...]

� 2006 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved

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Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.

He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us

He is also the co-author (under a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com

His latest book is: "How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary"

He can be reached at:
13877 Napa Drive
Manassas, Virginia 20112.

E-Mail: Coming soon


 

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The relation of this situation to money and banking is plain enough. The two great powers of government are the Power of the Sword and the Power of the Purse�in that order. In his Discourses on Livy, Macchiavelli exploded the shibboleth that "gold forms the sinews of war," with his commonsensical observation that "gold cannot always find good soldiers, but good soldiers can always find gold."