NSA Bluffdale facility to store over 5 zetabytes of surveilance data on sovereign American citizens

Back in the 1990's, patriotic citizens already knew that Americans were the most surveiled and dossiered people in the history of the world – more so than citizens under the Fascist or Communist regimes of Hitler or Stalin. Of great concern at that time was the liberty destroying implications of RICO, FINCEN, "Know Your Customer" and other similar interdiction philosophies, legislation and law enforcement policies and programs. The philosophy of the most former of these, RICO, threatened to invert one of the fundamentals of American liberty – the presumption of innocence until proof of guilt has been unanimously ratified by a jury of one's peers – by designating everyone as a potential suspect of criminal activity except those who could be positively ruled out as such. This philosophy represented a complete reversal of investigation policies which, prior to RICO, respected the presumption of innocence (and the Eighth Commandment) by requiring evidence of a crime having actually been committed BEFORE investigation could justifiably begin, and by limiting potential suspects to those who could be positively connected to the alleged crime. Instead, RICO legitimized the legal philosophy that everyone is a potential criminal and justified the indiscriminate, unwarranted and perpetual collection of data on all persons in a search for activity fitting various criminal profiles. FINCEN and "Know Your Customer" were two such data collection programs.

Sovereign citizens of the united States, concerned that such philosophies, policies and programs represented a threat to fundamental human rights that are enumerated in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, were assured that FINCEN was only regional and targeted only interbank transactions already under reasonable suspicion of illegal activity, while "Know Your Customer" bank procedures were only the recommendations of the World Bank and were thus voluntary and not required. Most concerned citizens outside of the East Coast ignored FINCEN, while throughout the Nation, "Know Your Customer" was vigorously opposed by customers who urged their banks to decline participation in this program. By the close of the 1990's, "Know Your Customer" had been defeated in the marketplace, as banks which were known to implement it suffered a measurable loss of patronage as a result. Then came September 11, 2001, and soon after came the Patriot Act, an essentially unreviewed and significantly under-debated piece of legislation which nationalized FINCEN-types of data collection on all persons, mandated "Know Your Customer," and expanded the indiscriminate collection of data on all sovereign citizens, regardless of any fundamental human rights enumerated in the Constitution. Today, all non-cash transactions are tracked and recorded along with all banking activity. All online activity is recorded – all websites accessed, all emails sent. Everything.

These are violations of fundamental and necessary human rights, violations which rise to the vaulting heights of malicious aggression against sovereign citizens of the united States. Those who ignore or dismiss such violations and the dire consequences which necessarily descend from them are blathering fools. "I'm not doing anything wrong, so what do I care," is their first response. These are intellectual incompetents, who, like nothing more than animals, merely exist from one impulse to the next, with little capacity for contemplating the meaning of their own existence much less considering the benefit of others. Narrow, thoughtless "in-the-moment" pragmatists, they concern themselves only with filling their own bellies. Today. Only with securing their own comfort. Today. Only with the swiftest course of relieving themselves the pain of thinking and working. Today. They do not have the capacity or foresight to see, understand or appreciate that, once they abdicate their obligations in a system of self-government, what is "right" or what is "wrong" is entirely outside their control – is determined solely by an independent central authority who owes no person an explanation for what criteria constitutes right or wrong or suspicious activity, why or when those criteria change, or whether any of it really matters once political interests presume to interfere. The second response of these incompetents is to suggest that, "We need to make certain sacrifices to enjoy peace and security." And here is more evidence of the same, and so I repeat: Narrow, thoughtless "in-the-moment" pragmatists, they concern themselves only with filling their own bellies. Today. Only with securing their own comfort. Today. Only with the swiftest course of relieving themselves of the pain of thinking and of working. Today. No sovereign citizen, nor collection of such citizens, has the authority or can assume the prerogative to suspend the fundamental and enumerated human rights of any other sovereign citizen for any reason. Period. That is what it means to be a Sovereign. And that is what it means to be an American citizen: not a follower of so-called "leaders" in government (a Sovereign has no leaders in government), not a subordinate to the arbitrary rule of greater men (a collection of Sovereigns recognize no one "greater" among themselves), but a a Sovereign who voluntarily submits along with his fellow Sovereigns to the Rule of Law, which they collaboratively establish in the halls of representative government. Fools can voluntarily suspend their own rights, and abdicate their sovereignty for the supposed benefits their stupidity justifies, but they cannot suspend the fundamental enumerated human rights of others or force them from the privilege of sovereignty into serfdom. And what benefit could they derive from it anyway? Benjamin Franklin suggests, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Those lacking the personal capacity and grit for the intellectual and physical struggle to acquire and maintain liberty, even at the cost of temporary safety, get exactly what they deserve. When liberty is turned over to the State, it is never peacefully returned; such fools would trade liberty for safety, and embrace slavery in return – would gladly trade everyone's liberty for the promise of their own temporary safety, and consign the whole of society to a fearfully wretched state of servitude under the tyranny of arbitrary and ruthless State power.

In the wake of the Generals Allen and Petraeus scandals, William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades, very simply and straightforwardly describes the magnitude of the government's data collection program. It started in the 1990's, accelerated swiftly under Bush following the Patriot Act, has continued to see considerable growth under Obama, and today, as Binney reports, the NSA is constructing a data center in Bluffdale, UT, capable of storing and managing over five zetabytes of data collected on sovereign American citizens.


Given that all data is simply stored, regardless of whether such activity is legal or even suspicious today, the reader should ask himself if the variety of data he accesses, uses and shares over a given period of time could be construed to suggest the profile of a criminal, or of someone harboring criminal sentiments? What kind of eBooks does he access, download and read, and what do they suggest regarding his psychological profile? What about twenty years from now? Is it possible that "hate speech" laws may be expanded by then to include the expression of religious conviction or the exercise or advocacy of Christian church practice – as it has already in Canada with respect to sexual orientation or in certain European countries fearful of fallout from criticism of Islam? Is it possible that certain political or economic philosophies, like democracy or capitalism, may be regarded as seditious in the near future and be punishable by imprisonment or execution – as in the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba and many other countries across the world through most of the 20^th Century? In these or any other circumstances, is it possible that the data one accesses, uses or shares today could be construed in the future as evidence of a psychological profile characteristic of what is thought to be a criminal, or a political enemy? The answer is most assuredly and emphatically, Yes!.

The proper response to impending and tragic loss of individual sovereignty and liberty in this Nation, is not that of Lutheran Quietism, is not the political action taken by the passive citizen of fascist Germany who may have had his opinion but remained demonstrably impotent as Hitler engaged in wanton and maniacal policies of the Final Solution. The answer is not that of the witless, careless and lazy leach who floats through life singing, "Que Sira Sira, I have my faith, I know I'm going to heaven, everything is in God's hands, nothing else matters, Que Sira Sira." These are not the answers of a Sovereign who bears not only the right but the authority and obligation to make himself heard, especially in matters pertaining to his liberty as a Sovereign and thus also his ability to freely carry out his rights and responsibilities as such. Shame on the American citizen, and especially the Christian, who would take no notice of nor have any care over the dissipation of fundamental enumerated human rights, who would rather submit to unwarranted and continuous surveillance and psychological profiling by the governing authorities than trouble himself to be concerned, and who would gladly force his countrymen to do the same.

Good citizenship requires that one stay informed, remain concerned, and be active. And the best way to be active is to remember Congressman Larry McDonald and the Four Boxes of Liberty:

If a Free Society is also a Civilized Society, we citizen-sovereigns are obligated
1. first to discuss such issues amongst ourselves, to utilize our freedom of speech to persuasively urge our neighbors and countrymen to abandon trust in the despotic machinations of freedom’s enemies and in those who work their engines;
2. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns to remove those from political office who misunderstand their limited roles, who disrespect the autonomy of citizen-sovereigns, and who work either deliberately or from profound ignorance and carelessness to deprive those whom they represent of their liberty, and to replace them with representatives who will not;
3. to then exercise our obligation as citizen-sovereigns to challenge unjust laws in the courts, even if we must first suffer the indignity and expense of suffering unjustly for disobeying such laws in order that material cause and legal standing can be established before the court;
4. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns, in our capacity as jurors who determine fact from evidence presented in the courts, and in agreement with fellow jurors, to nullify unjust laws when fellow citizen-sovereigns stand to suffer as victims of those laws (this is called jury-nullification);
5. and finally, when all else fails, we are obligated, as our Declaration of Independence clearly and directly states, to dismantle a government which cannot or will not be reformed, by force if necessary, and build a new one in its place, as is the right of all sovereigns who stand to be deprived of their sovereignty by others. From the Declaration:
   
   
   “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and 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, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
   
   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – 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 to 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.”
   
   It is in the defense of the individual citizen-sovereign’s liberty, as a sovereign, that alteration or abolishment of a government which is “destructive of the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is justified.

Congressman Larry McDonald is the one who is most often credited with a meme which capsulizes these four steps to preserving liberty. It is called the Four Boxes of Liberty, and it is a fitting place to end this post:


THE FOUR BOXES OF LIBERTY

1. The Soap Box
2. The Ballot Box
3. The Jury Box
4. The Ammo Box

William Binney, in his idealistic struggle for the cause of liberty, has taken his civic obligations as a citizen-sovereign all the way to McDonald's THIRD BOX of Liberty. He is a true example of personal sacrifice and dedication to protect against violations of the fundamental enumerated rights that are necessary to the character and continuation of our Nation. For more information, follow developments in the struggle to defend liberty in a digital world on the pages of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

 

Victim of Hungarian Socialism airs Political ad against rising tide of Socialism in the USA

The blog Intrepid Lutherans recently ran a series originally posted on The Finkelsteinery in 2009. That Intrepid Lutherans series was entitled, C.F.W Walther and the Two Kingdoms in Action: "No reasonable man, much less a Christian, can or should take part in the efforts of Communists and Socialists".

This same thorough, and thoroughly Biblical, historical and Christian refutation of the claims of Communism and Socialism, can be found on The Finkelsteinery in the following series of posts:

"America's Martin Luther" Lectures on Communism and Socialism - INTRODUCTION
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (Contents and Prefaces)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE ONE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE TWO)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE THREE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE FOUR)

Also to be found on The Finkelsteinery are two politically oriented Fourth of July postings, one addressing political Liberty in our Democratic Republic as a form of “confessional unity” in the Political Estate which makes a positive appeal to the reality of Divine Providence to justify its existence, and the second addressing the certain threat our Democratic Republic now faces of Communist overthrow.

We are the Sons of Liberty
The Communist Revolution in America: Thoughts & Warnings on the Eve of July 4, 2012

Finally, to see how, in 2009, the creation of a worldwide Socialist government was very narrowly averted at Copenhagen, thanks in part to Wikileaks, see the following series of articles also published on The Finkelsteinery:

Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near
An “Inconvenient Truth:” Climate Change and Scientific Fraud
EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance
Nopenhagen: Fata Morgana fades in Truth's Brilliant Light

In coming days, another series of posts will be featured on The Finkelsteinery from the writings of a conservative mid-19^th Century Frenchman who wrote in years leading up to the Third French Revolution (1848) (to which C.F.W. Walther refers, along with the Second Revolution of 1796, in his SECOND LECTURE) until his death in 1850 – writings which he submitted to his countrymen in favor of true economic and social Liberty, in order to combat the rising tide of Revolutionary Communist and Socialist sentiment. Though this writer failed to avert the Revolution instigated by Communist and Socialist agitation, and failed to avert the institution of Socialism as the form of government in France, the work which I intend to feature is one which is recognized as a continuation of the economic theory of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and as foundational to later celebrated economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and which, very interestingly and helpfully, sets limits on the very concept of Law itself, as employed by the State, by appeal to Natural Law and Divine Providence.

Stay Tuned!

 

Obama Supporters Become Romney Supporters -or- Youth Turn Against Obama...

This has been my experience with recent high-school/college graduates, as well (that's right, there is no distinction in my mind anymore). This is the result of what American society has spent twelve to sixteen, even twenty years, preparing for the leadership of the next generation. When I am 70+ years old, and have largely turned over the course of politics and religion to the next generation, I am confident that this is all that I will have to depend upon. That being the case, I expect that I will labour for my own survival until the day I die. The prospect of suffering under the failures of my own wit and health is far less frightening than suffering under the wisdom of today's youth.

As for Romney, yeah, he'll get the youth vote. He's better looking than his opponent.

 

The Communist Revolution in America: Thoughts & Warnings on the Eve of July 4, 2012

Given the state of affairs in the United States, while others are celebrating liberty, I thought it more appropriate to lament the withering assault liberty has suffered in the United States in the past 150 years, beginning with a short video recently released by Lt. Gen. Ret. W.G. Jerry Boykin, an original member of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, ultimately commanding the elite team in combat operations, who later led the Army’s Green Berets as well as the Special Warfare Center and School, and in the final four years of his 36 year career in the Army, served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence:

Lieutenant General (Ret.) W. G. Jerry Boykin,
decorated former Delta Force commander and U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence,
discusses the infiltration of Marxism in American politics and culture.

I was an undergraduate when the Iron Curtain fell. The year was 1989. I was too immature at the time to appreciate the gravity of the event, other than having a naïve feeling of relief that America and the West would soon be rid of the threat of thermonuclear war. The immediate impact was the rush of Eastern Europeans to the West, many of them excited to discover what they had only heard stories of: freedom and opportunity. Many Westerners were glad to receive them socially, and to create opportunities for them economically. For example, at that time, a close family member of mine, with contacts in State government, had swiftly developed business contacts in Russia, and as a result sponsored two families for an extended visit in America, so that they could learn our language, customs and business practices, and carrying this knowledge back to Russia with them, use it to broker relationships between local small businesses in America and Russia.

I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with the leaders of these families. Though these men had never seen a microwave oven before, they were nevertheless well-educated, refined and articulate. Both of them denied membership in the Communist Party, both served in the Soviet War in Afghanistan as non-commissioned officers (sergeants), both served in Soviet special forces. They were both excited to be in America, and both appreciated the opportunity to learn about us and share their experiences and perspectives. As they grew more familiar with America, however, their excitement waned, turning to caution and concern. They recognized the language of Communism in regular use in our society, and saw the prominent role of the Federal Government in the regulation of local matters as a hallmark of “bloodless revolution.”

This type of experience replayed itself over and over, as opportunities in the West resulted in a flood of Eastern European university students. After becoming politically aware, I began to seek these people out, to learn from them. As a result, I befriended a young man from the Czech Republic (who later naturalized and is still living in America) who came from a family of vintners. I apparently roused him out of a mild depression with some intelligent political discourse – I happened to know the name of his President and could pronounce his name properly. It was a little thing that made him very happy. Over several years in college, we had many good conversations. One I recall was his love for America and his desire to be a citizen – which he accomplished without having to get married to an American (he said, “I’m not about to trade one form of freedom for another...”). Another conversation I will never forget, was one in which he expressed vile hatred for Communism and the Soviets:

“I hate the Communists. They killed millions of my people. Over decades, the people just disappeared. The Communist authorities would come through every now and then to intimidate the people. They would randomly collect some of them. Sometimes we found the graves, usually we wouldn't, but no one would ever see these missing people again. If you were a teacher or an artist or a leader of some sort – if you were smart – it seemed like you were more likely to disappear. The masses were to be laborers, nothing more.”

In another conversation, he confessed:

“I love America, but for the first two years I lived here, I thought everyone wanted to be a Socialist! They keep using socialist words, like ‘the masses,’ or ‘the government,’ as if government is going to make them prosperous. I couldn’t believe it! I would tell them, ‘That is Socialism! Why do you want Socialism?’ It didn't take too long before I realized, Americans don’t really want Socialism, they’re just stupid and don’t realize that’s what is coming right around the corner.”

This was the time of the unelected co-president Hillary Clinton’s village-building-through-socialized-medicine escapade, which positioned a monolithic “national” government directly in relation to the “mass of individuals.” Rather than respecting the limited role of the Federal government, which positions it in relation to the governments of the States of our union, and in relation to the governments of foreign nations, “socialized medicine” placed the Federal government in direct relation to the individual, disrupting and interfering with the governing authority of the State, County and local governments whose functions include individual concerns (unlike that of the Federal Government).

I could go on... There were the Hungarian and Polish students, who seemed to get along with each other fairly well, but who were so full of national pride that it was nearly impossible to have a productive discussion with them... Then there was the Russian physics student – an admitted Party member – who was a lot of fun to argue the merits of Capitalism with. There were the Slovakians, the Estonians, Latvians and even a few Bulgarians. All expressed similar sentiments regarding their former years under Communism (“I remember those days in black and white, there are no color images in my memory... everything was so uncertain, there was no hope,” one acquaintance reminisced) and their concern for the future of America as they recognized the encroachment of the same political ideas they thought they had left behind in Eastern Europe.

The Communist Manifesto and the Ten Planks of Communism
Their outlook on America and the dangers of Communism left an impression on me. I read the Communist Manifesto and other historical sources, and came to understand

1. that the common sentiment, “From each according his ability, to each according to his need,” is the mantra of Communist collectivism;
2. that the worker solidarity movements of the late 19^th Century were organized by Marxist agitators seeking a foothold in America;
3. that 19^th Century Industrialists, in response to the rise of Communism in Europe and its presence among the labor unions in America, sought to exploit labour solidarity for the purposes of their bourgeois Utopian ideals by financing John Dewey’s Education Revolution in America, proliferating his pragmatic ideologies of education (i.e. “Progressivism”), to create, not educated people (artes liberalis), but trained people (artes servilis), and even sponsoring Dewey’s residency in Russia shortly after the Bolshevic Revolution, to consult with the Soviets as they developed their system of education;
4. that Marxism, while being both a political and an economic theory, is also a social theory which relies upon the assumption that the world’s economy is a “closed system,” and that social groups must therefore compete for economic resources which are, in principle, limited
   
   • that the reason why the solidarity movements in America went no further politically than the creation of labour unions was that immigrants were predisposed to giving up their identity as unique social groups, rather than clinging to them, and that they endeavored instead to assimilate with the culture of their new home (the “melting pot”),
   • and, thus, that the following eighty year period was devoted to the legislative creation of such groups, in order to pit them against one another in American society and force them to clamor before the Federal government for limited economic resources (the “salad bowl”), and in this way create the condition of social conflict that Marxist social theory was invented to solve – such groups include
     - various “protected class citizens,” which pit employees against employers and employees against one another, and subordinates them to a government before which they must compete for increasing “protection” and “accommodation,”
     - various “classes of social need,” advocacy for and alleviation of which require a multitude of government agencies, all of which compete for limited economic resources,
     - various classes of “economic privilege,” created through complex tax policies granting increasing “tax advantages” as a function of a citizen’s productivity, breeding jealousy and discontent among the less productive who consequently appeal to government for greater economic benefits.
5. that all of these developments, and more, were quite consistent with the Ten Planks of Communism clearly laid out by Marx and Engels toward the end of Chapter II of the Communist Manifesto, which reads:
   
   
   “The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms
   
   “The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
   
   “But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
   
   “We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
   
   “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
   
   “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
   
   “These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
   
   
   1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
   2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
   3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
   4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
   5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
   6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
   7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
   8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
   9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
   10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
   
   “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

The Communist Rules for Revolution
It is interesting, and rather alarming, to compare the comments of Lt. General Boykin from the video, above, and the Ten Planks of Communism found in the Communist Manifesto, with a Communist document that is said to have been captured in Dusseldorf, DE, in 1919, by Allied Forces: the Communist Rules for Revolution. Though there is some question as to the authenticity of the claim that it originated in Germany, or that it was even written anytime before the 1930’s, it is said to have been published in a local Oklahoma newspaper in 1919 (the “Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise”), it is known to have been published in a magazine in 1946 (“Moral Re-Armament”), and was endorsed as authentic by Florida state attorney George Brautigam in 1954. Since then, it has been entered into the Congressional Record no less than three times.

COMMUNIST RULES FOR REVOLUTION
In May 1919 at Dusseldorf, Germany, the allied forces discovered a copy of these 'Rules.' They were first printed in the United States in the 'Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Examiner-Enterprise' the same year, 1919.

Almost 20 years later, in 1946, a state attorney of Florida (George A. Brautigam) obtained them from a known member of the Communist Party, who acknowledged that the 'Rules' were then still a part of the Communist program for the United States.


1. Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness.
2. Get control of all means of publicity and thereby:
   1. Get people's minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays and other trivialities.
   2. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.
   3. Destroy the people's faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule and obloquy.
   4. Always preach true democracy but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.
   5. By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.
   6. Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders, and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of government toward such disorders.
   7. By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues: Honesty, Sobriety, Continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness.
3. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with a view to confiscating them and leaving the population helpless.

Congressman Larry McDonald and the Four Boxes of Liberty
One of those entering the Communist Rules for Revolution into the Congressional Record was none other than Congressman Larry McDonald. A cousin of General George S. Patton, he was a conservative Democrat during the 1970’s, an ardent foe of Communism, and president of the John Birch Society. He was aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down by the Soviets in 1983. He was known to be considering a run for the Office of United States President at the time.

Congressman Larry McDonald defended the authenticity of the Communist Rules for Revolution, which were suspected of spurious origin at the time he submitted them to the Record for publication, in a 1975 editorial he published in the Rome News-Tribune, as follows:

“The U.S. Army officer present when the document was first noted by Allied authorities was Captain Thomas H. Barber, Aide to the officer in charge of Civil Affairs in the American-occupied zone headquarters, Coblenz, Germany. The communist organization raided was the German Spartacist League.

“A controversy has raged as to whether or not ‘The Rules’ are authentic. In 1969 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was unable to give substantiation and the Library of Congress was of no help either.

“The problem was increased when the New York Times writer wrote in July 10, 1970, that ‘The Rules’ were a hoax, but of course he offered no proof – merely the failure to substantiate as ‘his proof.’

“Fortunately the organization Moral Re-Armament in 1970 resolved the confusion when a search in their files produced a copy hand written by Captain Barber. Furthermore, a letter dated January, 1962, revealed that the Library of Congress had indeed been sent this information and its source.

Given such evidences, the questions for us center on how we ought to respond. In a Free Society, where each citizen is sovereign (defined by his right to ownership of property), not the government, and where the government is servant to its sovereigns, not the citizen servant to his government, how does a conscientious citizen deal with growing threats against his liberty? How does he deal with encroaching tyranny? If a Free Society is also a Civilized Society, we citizen-sovereigns are obligated

1. first to discuss such issues amongst ourselves, to utilize our freedom of speech to persuasively urge our neighbors and countrymen to abandon trust in the despotic machinations of freedom’s enemies and in those who work their engines;
2. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns to remove those from political office who misunderstand their limited roles, who disrespect the autonomy of citizen-sovereigns, and who work either deliberately or from profound ignorance and carelessness to deprive those whom they represent of their liberty, and to replace them with representatives who will not;
3. to then exercise our obligation as citizen-sovereigns to challenge unjust laws in the courts, even if we must first suffer the indignity and expense of suffering unjustly for disobeying such laws in order that material cause and legal standing can be established before the court;
4. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns, in our capacity as jurors who determine fact from evidence presented in the courts, and in agreement with fellow jurors, to nullify unjust laws when fellow citizen-sovereigns stand to suffer as victims of those laws (this is called jury-nullification);
5. and finally, when all else fails, we are obligated, as our Declaration of Independence clearly and directly states, to dismantle a government which cannot or will not be reformed, by force if necessary, and build a new one in its place, as is the right of all sovereigns who stand to be deprived of their sovereignty by others. From the Declaration:
   
   
   “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and 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, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
   
   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – 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 to 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.”
   
   It is in the defense of the individual citizen-sovereign’s liberty, as a sovereign, that alteration or abolishment of a government which is “destructive of the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is justified.

Congressman Larry McDonald is the one who is most often credited with a meme which capsulizes these four steps to preserving liberty. It is called the Four Boxes of Liberty, and it is a fitting place to end this post:

THE FOUR BOXES OF LIBERTY


1. The Soap Box
2. The Ballot Box
3. The Jury Box
4. The Ammo Box

Wishing what few and infrequent readers I have an introspective Fourth of July, 2012.

Freddy Finkelstein



P.S.: For a thorough, and thoroughly Biblical, historical and Christian refutation of the claims of Communism and Socialism, see this series of Lectures published on The Finkelsteinery in 2009, by 19^th Century Lutheran theologian Dr. C.F.W. Walther:

"America's Martin Luther" Lectures on Communism and Socialism - INTRODUCTION
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (Contents and Prefaces)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE ONE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE TWO)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE THREE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE FOUR)

Also, to see how, in 2009, the creation of a worldwide Socialist government was very narrowly averted at Copenhagen, thanks in part to Wikileaks, see the following series of articles also published on The Finkelsteinery:

Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near
An “Inconvenient Truth:” Climate Change and Scientific Fraud
EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance
Nopenhagen: Fata Morgana fades in Truth's Brilliant Light

 

Newt Gingrich controls debate on energy policy

Even though he is currently running third in the Republican Primaries, with approximately only half of the delegates won so far by Rick Santorum, who is running second, and one-third the delegates of the current leader in the Primaries, Mitt Romney, it is the ideas proposed by Newt Gingrich, not Mitt Romney, and not Rick Santorum, which are drawing fire from the current Democrat-controlled White House. Neither Romney nor Santorum have revealed a platform that is compelling enough to draw commentary from our current President, Barack Obama; but Newt Gingrich's energy proposals, being simple to communicate and easy to defend given the abundance of facts supporting them, clearly represent an early threat to the President's re-election, so much so that he is already actively campaigning against those ideas. Neither Romney nor Santorum can boast the honor of having such compelling and broadly appealing ideas that the President has singled out those ideas for rebuttal.

Even the analogies used by Newt Gingrich, being powerfully descriptive and meaningful to Americans, are being absconded and repeated by the President as his own.

Newt Gingrich: It's kind of strange to have an American president who favors Saudi oil over American oil. Saudi jobs over American jobs. I frankly want an energy policy so no president ever again bows to a Saudi King...

Brian Kilmeade: Mr. Speaker, you are clearly on the President's mind. The $2.50 [per gallon]... and he used your example that you've been using, because you wanted talk about space exploration, you said, "they would have said that about Christopher Columbus" -- he's even using your phrases.


Newt Gingrich: Well, imitation is a high form of flattery... It is the President who is refusing to recognize the modern world. In the modern world, the amount of oil we have in North Dakota because of new drilling technology has jumped from 150 million barrels to 24 billion barrels in the last decade. We have more oil in North Dakota than we ever dreamed possible, and some poeple think that with another generation of new technology, we'll have 500 billion barrels in North Dakota. It's the President who is sort of a -- he used the term "flat-earth society" [in reference to Newt's energy proposals], I would say that he belongs to the "Sierra Club Flat-Earth Society," he can't believe anything new that would improve energy because then it takes away his desire for government to control our lives... Look, I'm for biological research, I'm for developing algea over time, but with the current algea technologies you'd have to have over $850 per barrel oil to make them economically competitive. The President just lives in this fantasy land where he goes around -- it's like Solyndra -- he imagines these things up. It's like shovel-ready jobs. Remember he finally admitted two years later that there were no shovel-ready jobs in his shovel-ready jobs program? Well, we're back to the same fantasy life. The American people deserve inexpensive oil and gas, if it's possible, they deserve it from American sources, to keep the money in America to create American jobs. The President is doing just the opposite. He's asking the Saudi's to bail us out, which means that he'll have to bow even more deeply the next time he sees a Saudi King. I'm deeply opposed to that kind of foreign policy.

Notice how throughout his conversation, Newt effortlessly weaves the health of the American economy with foreign policy and national security. It's all connected, and this connectedness is easy to manage in the course of discussion for someone like Newt, who has command of the ideas and the facts. His main competitors, on the other hand, compartmentalize topics and limit themselves to pragmatics that spin well as marketing slogans and commercials. Romney and Santorum come off as traveling salesmen, selling themselves for President. Newt, on the other hand, is an intellectual with ideas, who's task is earning the Presidency through informed and persuasive argument.

We Conservatives got snookered by a "traveling salesman" in 2000, and held our nose in 2004 when we knew what we were voting for. But we couldn't do it in 2008. I'm not sure I can force myself do it in 2012, either. As I stated in February, the more I listen and watch, the more I am convinced that Newt is the only candidate on the field today with the experience and the intellectual horsepower to lead our nation back to its founding principles in the Great Ideas of Western Civilization, having a clear view of our nation’s unique position in the Arc of History and our vital importance to the continuation of Liberty and Human Rights in the World. With these Great Ideas as foundation, I am further convinced that Newt's leadership will be essential to returning America to a position of economic and political respect and dominance in the World.

Newt Gingrich 2012

 

Who is Newt Gingrich?

"I'm running for President because I think we are in enormous danger of losing America as a country that is exceptional. I think we are in enormous danger of losing our economic vitality, losing our national security, and ultimately losing our freedom. And I think we need a leader who understands what has made America great, and who is prepared to unleash the American people to go back to rebuilding the country that we love."

I think Newt is correct. As I stated in my previous post, not only is America is great peril, not only is liberty and our economy at risk, but, in my opinion, the trajectory of Western Civilization hinges on the 2012 Presidential election. The Great Ideas of Western Civilization coalesced in the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution of the united States; in this Great Experiment, the torch of Liberty was passed to us to carry forward. While it flickered out nearly everywhere else, America had remained a shining beacon, the last best hope of Liberty for the common man -- if he could only get here, he could shed the burden of tyranny which oppressed him and freely apply his God-given faculties to the opportunites that his own land, labour and capital presented him with. Today, that torch appears to be spent and nearly extinguished, as the Ideas which fuel it disappear through ignorance and/or wanton disregard.

Newt Gingrich 2012

 

Dissecting the deliberately misleading discourse of a committed Liberal, requires intelligence and thorough articulation.

Newt Gingrich Responds to President Obama’s Energy Speech
in a speech before the California GOP in San Fransisco, February 2012

The Candidate for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States who has, in my mind, emerged with the strongest platform for righting our listing ship of State, is Newt Gingrich. I'll admit, I've always liked Newt as a Conservative political leader and intellectual, and remember with fondness his leadership in the House during the 1990's. Though troubled by his ignominious departure from politics, and the content of media reports regarding the way he handled his second disintegrating marriage, after watching him through the debates, I am convinced that Newt is the only candidate on the field today with the experience and the intellectual horsepower to lead our nation back to its founding principles in the Great Ideas of Western Civilization, having a clear view of our nation’s unique position in the Arc of History and our vital importance to the continuation of Liberty and Human Rights in the World.

The challenges hurled at us by Socialists and post-Structuralists on the left, and by narrow-minded pragmatists and vulture-capitalists on the right, are destructively dismissive of what it is that we ought to be conserving in our Nation, and in the West; as I listen to Newt and compare him with his fellow contenders, I have become convinced that Newt has a clear understanding of how to meet those challenges in a way that not only preserves but propels our American values and way of life into the future. The other Candidates for the Republican Nomination today, however, give no indication that they see these matters as clearly as Newt Gingrich or understand them as deeply, nor do they seem to be able to articulate sound solutions to the dire and very complex circumstances we now face in ways which effectively marshal the fundamental ideologies of America's founding and which are necessary to the perpetuation of the West. Newt can, and he demonstrates this every time he is given an opportunity to speak. The fact is, two of his opponents in the race for Republican Nomination are sputtering pragmatists who, following the old worn-out formula for political campaigns, are running on issues, not on principles which reach to the foundations of America's social and political institutions, and not on ideas which will propel our Nation through the next generation. His third opponent is an unrepentant ideologue with no realistic plan of action whatsoever. We don’t need another narrow Republican issues-pragmatist for President. Not fully understanding or appreciating the root of our problems, they have a sad history of advocating quick fixes, rather than structural changes, that are easy to communicate and politically expedient, rather than necessarily complex and requiring the focused participation and dialogue of all representatives in the Legislature. In this way they are ruining our nation with their short-sightedness, their alienation of opposing parties, and their shallow understanding of and seemingly limited regard for America’s greatness and importance in the history, and to the future, of Human Rights and Liberty. In my opinion, the trajectory of Western Civilization hinges on the 2012 Presidential election.

In the clip above, Newt demonstrates exactly what will be necessary not only to defeat Barack Obama in the next election, but to contend with adversaries throughout a Presidency which has as its purpose the implementation of structural changes in the way government runs: careful, point-by-point dissection of his adversaries – even though it results in longer and more complex speeches. Newt here demonstrates that he is intelligent and articulate enough to make his case, and to hold the attention of his audience even though it requires lengthy explanation. And this is what we need. We need an intellectual in office for a change, not a pragmatist, not a person who stammers at the limits of his knowledge every time he's called upon to defend his proposals from both fact and principle.


Newt Gingrich 2012

In case you haven't heard other of his speeches, here are a couple of the more compelling speeches he has given during this Primary season:


Newt Gingrich's Speech at CPAC 2012






"A Better Approach to Deficit Reduction"
A public policy speach delivered by Newt Gingrich
at the Heritage Foundation, August 2011