Freedom First Society

The “Diversity” Police Draw Down … on Diversity

Apparently, spokesmen for the “diversity” agenda are useful to that agenda’s authors only if they can use diversity as a weasel-word. Like so many nice-sounding words in the Marxist vocabulary (e.g., freedom and equality), what diversity means to the trained revolutionary is basically the opposite of what it means to the rest of us.

Any “diversity” spokesperson who ignores that fact can potentially subvert the revolutionary narrative. That’s why it needed correcting immediately, when recently one such spokesperson veered off script.

What did she say that was so upsetting to the “diversity” police? Here is the dangerously Americanist take on diversity she leaked:

“I focus on everyone. Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT or whatever because that means they’re carrying that around … because that means that we are carrying that around on our foreheads.

“And I’ve often told people a story — there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation. The issue is representation and mix and bringing all the voices into the room that can contribute to the outcome of any situation.”
— Denise Young Smith, Apple’s first-ever Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion

In retrospect, it might have been particularly impolitic to offer this nugget of good sense at the One Young World Summit in Bogotá, Colombia, in a panel discussion on fighting racial injustice. In any case, she was quickly called on the carpet. We can infer this from the fact that she emailed a groveling apology just a few days later:

Colleagues,

I have always been proud to work for Apple in large part because of our steadfast commitment to creating an inclusive culture. We are also committed to having the most diverse workforce and our work in this area has never been more important. In fact, I have dedicated my twenty years at Apple to fostering and promoting opportunity and access for women, people of color and the underserved and unheard.

Last week, while attending a summit in Bogota, I made some comments as part of a conversation on the many factors that contribute to diversity and inclusion.

I regret the choice of words I used to make this point. I understand why some people took offense. My comments were not representative of how I think about diversity or how Apple sees it. For that, I’m sorry.

More importantly, I want to assure you Apple’s view and our dedication to diversity has [sic] not changed.

Understanding that diversity includes women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and all underrepresented minorities is at the heart of our work to create an environment that is inclusive of everyone.

Our commitment at Apple to increasing racial and gender diversity is as strong as it’s ever been. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made, but there is much work to be done. I’m continually reminded of the importance of talking about these issues and learning from each other.

Best,

Denise

That a black woman with 20 years of experience working in the mostly white, male environment at Apple should have to issue an apology for alleged insensitivity to diversity concerns, shown just by her stating these sane, obvious truths, speaks volumes about the real agenda of the ostensibly charitable “diversity” police. In short, it has nothing to do with the everyday, American concept of diversity. Instead, it is the veiled, revolutionary usage of the term that is at play. And like every other nice-sounding, emotionally-charged word in the Marxist lexicon, this concept boils down to really meaning, “a Marxist-controlled socialist dictatorship, in which everyone does and says just what they’re told.” Because to Marxists, that’s paradise.

Murray Rothbard, the great Austrian-school economist and libertarian, wrote this incisive paragraph about Marxism and diversity:

“A hallmark of every utopia is a militant desire to put an end to history, to freeze mankind in a static state, to put an end to diversity and man’s free will, and to order everyone’s life in accordance with the utopian’s totalitarian plan. Many early communists and socialists set forth their fixed utopias in great and absurd detail, determining the size of everyone’s living quarters, the food they would eat, etc. Marx was not silly enough to do that, but his entire system, as Thomas Molnar points out, is ‘the search of the utopian mind for the definitive stabilization of mankind or, in gnostic terms, its reabsorption in the timeless.’ For Marx, his quest for utopia was, as we have seen, an explicit attack on God’s creation and a ferocious desire to destroy it.”
— Murray Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995), vol. 2, chap. 11

But if the hard left are not really concerned about human diversity, why would they even raise concerns about these particular “minority” groups—the LBQT, females, and non-whites? It’s because they have hand-picked those groups whose grievances (real or fictional) can be used to engineer a revolution that would produce such a Marxist “utopia.”

This is the overlooked truth of the current “diversity” hue and cry. Many have expressed this truth, although perhaps none more clearly than the blogger David Hilton (writing as “Moses Apostaticus”). It’s a truth the American people need to learn, well and quickly:

“Many Americans are familiar with political correctness, yet may not be familiar with its origins in cultural Marxist theory.… [C]ultural Marxism argues that … the nuclear family, traditional morality and concepts of race, gender and sexual identity … [are] chains of tyranny which must be broken by revolution.

“Modern woman, are you unhappy in your marriage? Are the responsibilities of motherhood and the burdens of work getting you down? Patriarchy! Black man, do you feel hard done by? Does it seem like the deck is always stacked against you and you can’t get a break? Racism! Gay man, are you tired of the sneers and microaggressions of straight men? They’re afraid that they’re gay too. That’s why they hate you!

“These are the narratives which are paraded endlessly in our education system. They are not natural or accidental. They have been constructed by intellectuals and academics who have had a radical agenda to transform the nation, and benefit themselves in the process.…

“Marxism is always cloaked in high-sounding utopian rhetoric. This is a ruse. What cultural Marxists seek has nothing to do with true diversity, social harmony or universal tolerance. They don’t want the races getting along. They seek power. The solution for the perceived injustices that Cultural Marxists have manufactured is radical social engineering. The power to carry out this social engineering must be given, of course, to a politically-correct elite determined to remake society along ideological lines.”
— Moses Apostaticus, “Cultural Marxism Is Destroying America”

Constitutional Camouflage

“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.” — Thomas Jefferson, September 7, 1803

House rules requiring a Constitutional Authority Statement for every bill submitted have been around for some time. In 1997, the 105th Congress adopted such a rule, imposed on Committee reports. Early on the rules were likely inspired to some extent by outside pressure, but more recently the House GOP merely seems to have discovered a political public relations opportunity.

The current and latest such Rule was adopted by the Bohener-led House in 2011, as promised in the House GOP’s 2010 Pledge to America. The Rule mandated that every bill or joint resolution submitted be accompanied by a statement “citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the bill or joint resolution.”

In its January 5, 2011 explanation of the new rule, the House Committee on Rules stated:

“The adequacy and accuracy of the citation of constitutional authority is matter for debate in the committee and in the House. The rule simply requires that the bill be accompanied by a constitutional authority statement upon introduction.”

Unfortunately, the “debates” in the House are generally little more than chest pounding by a lead by proponent from the majority party with equal time allotted to a representative of the minority party. If the measure has bipartisan support, opponents are rarely heard. Moreover, in reviewing hundreds of pages in the Congressional Record, your author cannot recall the constitutionality of a measure ever being challenged on the floor of the House.

As the Rules report further stated: “Ultimately, the House will express its opinion on a proposed bill, including its constitutionality, by either approving or disapproving the bill.” So nothing really changed. The requirement for an accompanying Constitutional Authority Statement has not prevented unconstitutional business-as-usual one iota.

No one should be surprised. Given the tremendous forces behind the centralization of more and more unconstitutional functions in the federal government, it would be unreasonable to expect the House GOP leadership willingly to bind themselves down with “the chains of the Constitution.”

As confirmation of those expectations, let’s look at the abuses of Constitutional Authority Statements that pretend those chains don’t exist. Three clauses in particular have been misinterpreted to portray the Constitution as a blank-check authorization: The “General Welfare Clause,” the “Interstate Commerce Clause,” and the “Necessary and Proper Clause.” These willful misconstructions, supported by activist Supreme Court decisions, have long served as protective coloration for the successful drive to create unlimited government.

The “General Welfare Clause”

Undoubtedly, the most common citation of constitutional authority is Article I, Section 8, particularly the introductory “General Welfare Clause.” Here is a typical such authority statement

“Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuant to the following: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, to ‘provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.’”

The “general welfare clause” in Article I, Section 8, is commonly misused to create the appearance that unconstitutional congressional acts are constitutional. In 1987, Notre Dame Law School Professor Charles Rice clarified the misuse of the clause:

“The Constitution created a government of limited, delegated powers. The term ‘general welfare’ in Article I, Section 8, does not confer on Congress a general power to legislate and regulate for purposes beyond those enumerated in the remaining clauses of Section 8. If the General Welfare Clause had been intended to confer an open-ended power to legislate for whatever purposes Congress might consider necessary for the general welfare, it would have made no sense for the framers to have followed it with what would have been a needless list of particular powers that would have been included by implication in the general one. In fact, the clause did not confer a general power to enact legislation at all.

“Instead, it conferred a power only to enact legislation to ‘lay and collect’ taxes and, by implication, to spend the revenue raised by those taxes for the ‘general welfare.’ It was, then, not a general power to regulate the activities of the people, but a power to tax and to appropriate, i.e., to spend, which was limited to the purposes stated in the remaining clauses of Section 8.”

In the Federalist No. 41, James Madison, “the Father of the Constitution,” had also rejected the claim that the General Welfare Clause “amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare”:

“For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”

During congressional debate on February 7, 1792, Madison warned:

“[I]f Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress….”

But politicians today still get away with claiming that the clause gives them a grant of power to do almost anything if they can project some benefit for the general welfare. (Our example: How about Congress forbidding families from having more than one child to promote population control or to stop climate change?)

Frequently, Congressional Authority Statements merely refer to the entire Article I, Section 8, and not just its preamble, without identifying any particular power. They thus imply that Article I, Section 8 provides Congress with general legislative authority. But Alexander Hamilton refuted this notion in The Federalist, No. 83 by pointing to the Constitution’s enumeration of specific powers:

“This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”

The “Interstate Commerce Clause”

Statements of Constitutional Authority for unconstitutional acts also cite clause 8 of Article I, Section 8 — the “Interstate Commerce Clause.” In so doing, they are following creative Supreme Court decisions overturning long-established understanding.

Clause 8 states: “[The Congress shall have Power:] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” [Emphasis added.]

The middle section of this clause was designed to give Congress the power to prevent the states from inhibiting the interstate flow of goods through trade barriers, as they had previously done. In allaying Anti-federalist concerns, James Madison stated that the clause was not designed “to be used for positive purposes,” but was to serve as a “a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves.”

And for many years in our nation’s history this was well understood and observed. “Nonetheless,” as the late Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald observed in his book, We Hold These Truths — A reverent review of the United States Constitution (1976), “more pressures were put on Congress to enlarge its powers under the Interstate Commerce Clause than under any other provision of the Constitution. Commercial affairs, being among the most pervasive and the most profitable of man’s activities, produced many reasons for such pressures.”

The “Necessary and Proper Clause”

Article I, Section 8, Clause 18, commonly referred to as the “necessary and proper clause,” authorizes Congress to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.” [Emphasis added.]

In The Federalist, No. 44, James Madison wrote: “Without the substance of this power, the whole Constitution would be a dead letter.” And a report on the Virginia Resolutions, drafted by Madison, stated that this clause “is not a grant of new powers to Congress, but merely a declaration, for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those [powers] otherwise granted are included in the grant.”

Yet despite its clear meaning, the clause has been eagerly misinterpreted as an “elastic clause” authorizing Congress to do virtually anything it decides is “necessary and proper.”

In arguing against the constitutionality of a national bank, Thomas Jefferson further admonished against the creative use of the “necessary and proper clause” (February 15, 1791):

“It has been urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true: yet the Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers.”

And One More

The House Appropriations Committee has often cited Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 as authorization for appropriations for blatantly unconstitutional programs and departments. The clause states: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law….”

Citing this clause as an authorization to spend money is an insult to our intelligence. The clause is akin to a corporate requirement that two officers sign every check. In no way would such a requirement by itself entitle the officers to write checks at their pleasure.

In Summary

For decades, the Establishment media in “informing” public opinion have conveniently ignored: 1) the federalist principles America’s Founders incorporated in the Constitution; and 2) their vision that the Constitution imposed strict limits on what the federal government could and could not do — it could only properly do what was specifically delegated to it. With regard to both, James Madison stated in The Federalist No. 45:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce….”

And in The Federalist No. 14, Madison further commented on the limited purpose of the federal government:

“Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.”

The Solution

America’s Founders intended for the people to control their new government through the House of Representatives. To promote local accountability, they required representatives to stand for frequent elections (every two years) in relatively small districts, and they gave the House the all-important power of the purse. As James Madison emphasized in the Federalist No. 58, a simple majority in the House alone has the power to bring government under control:

“The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse — that powerful instrument … [for reducing] … all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The reason the House hasn’t exercised that authority in recent times is that no simple majority has, or can acquire on its own, the desire and backbone to do so. Such a majority would have to stand up to the Establishment’s grip on the parties and withstand its dominating influence on public opinion.

Realistically, the necessary backbone must come from an informed, engaged electorate following new leadership, provided through a new channel of communications. Freedom First Society was founded to offer that leadership. See also our online no-nonsense congressional scorecard to find out whether your representative is voting to continue or roll back Washington’s assault on America and our campaign page: Congress: Just Vote the Constitution!

Footnote: The history of Supreme Court misconstruction of the Constitution is recounted in We Hold These Truths — A reverent review of the United States Constitution (1976) by the late Congressman Lawrence (Larry) Patton McDonald (See Chapter V: A Breach in the Wall).

The UN — Freedom’s Enemy

“This institution was founded in the aftermath of two world wars to help shape this better future. It was based on the vision that diverse nations could cooperate to protect their sovereignty, preserve their security, and promote their prosperity….

“[W]e helped build institutions such as this one to defend the sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all….”
— President Donald Trump, addressing the UN General Assembly, 9-19-17

Correction, Please! No, the UN is not about protecting national sovereignty. It is the very enemy of sovereignty.

The UN was created under false pretexts as a tool of Internationalist Insiders to build a totalitarian world government run by them. That evolutionary agenda is alive and well today.

In the April 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), future Trilateralist Richard N. Gardner (CFR) openly admitted that world government was the objective of his fellow internationalists. But he endorsed the deception of the salami approach for destroying national sovereignty:

“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing, confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”

Part of the Internationalists’ long-term goal is to disarm the nations of the world, while arming the UN as a new superpower.

A document boldly describing the long-range program was issued by the Dean Rusk (CFR) State Department as Department of State Publication 7277. It carried the title Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World. President Kennedy presented it personally before the UN General Assembly on September 25th of that year (1961).

According to Freedom from War, the transfer of arms to the UN is to occur in three stages:

“In Stage III progressive controlled disarmament … would proceed to a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force.” [Emphasis added.]

When Stage III was fully implemented, the United States would be forced to comply with UN decisions, (i.e., decisions of the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR] oligarchy that designed the UN).

During that same period, the Kennedy State Department also contracted with the private Institute for Defense Analysis to prepare a classified study. In support of the study, a memorandum entitled A World Effectively Controlled By the United Nations candidly discussed the best strategy for establishing world government. The complete text of that shocking memorandum, authored by MIT professor Lincoln P. Bloomfield (CFR), appears as a “reference” on our website. (See “References” in our main menu)

The memorandum’s author was MIT professor Lincoln P. Bloomfield (CFR). The opening paragraph of the Bloomfield contribution reads:

“A world effectively controlled by the United Nations is one in which ‘world government’ would come about through the establishment of supranational institutions, characterized by mandatory universal membership and some ability to employ physical force. Effective control would thus entail a preponderance of political power in the hands of a supranational organization…. [T]he present UN Charter could theoretically be revised in order to erect such an organization equal to the task envisaged, thereby codifying a radical rearrangement of power in the world.”

Perhaps the most shocking is the claim in the memorandum is that the UN would need nuclear weapons to ensure world “peace”:

“The appropriate degree of relative force would, we conclude, involve total disarmament down to police and internal security levels for the constituent units, as against a significant conventional capability at the center backed by a marginally significant nuclear capability.” [Emphasis added.]

UN Architects Not Humanitarians

The argument of the UN founders that the UN would prevent wars and promote world peace is undermined by the fact that these Internationalists made sure that a cabal of criminal regimes, controlled by them, would dominate the UN Security Council and other UN institutions. So we have the “acceptable” criminals who are supposed to police the “rogue” criminals.

In addition, over many decades these Internationalist conspirators have persistently perverted U.S. power to undermine and betray regimes friendly to the U.S. and help totalitarians take over their nations. China is a prime example, and we could list many others.

The Betrayal of China

At the end of July 1946, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, clamped an embargo on the sale of arms and ammunition to our World War II ally Chiang Kai-shek. Marshall would boast: “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 anti-Communist divisions, now with a stroke of the pen I disarm them.” Stockpiles of arms on their way to Chiang were actually destroyed in India. Meanwhile, the Soviets equipped Communist Mao Tse-tung with vast stores of U.S. military supplies Truman had provided Stalin for the assault on Japan.

On January 25, 1949, John F. Kennedy, a young second-term congressman from Massachusetts, rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to protest the actions of his party’s president:

“Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming, unless a coalition government with the Communists were formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government.”

A few days later, he would summarize his protest in words that could be applied to the future handling of Vietnam: “What our young men had saved, our diplomats and our President have frittered away.”

What Representative Kennedy may not have understood at the time was that the betrayal of China was orchestrated by the Establishment he would later serve as president.

Professor R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii estimated the death toll from the resulting Chinese genocide conservatively at more than 35 million deaths — approximately one of every 20 Chinese.

The “unfortunate publicity” of Chinese troops mowing down student protestors in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre caused nary a blip in U.S.-Chinese relations. Within a few weeks of that massacre, U.S. officials Lawrence Eagleburger (CFR, formerly of Kissinger Associates) and Brent Scowcroft (former chairman of the CFR’s membership committee) would travel to China to reassure the Chinese leaders of continued U.S.-Chinese relations.

Some More Inconvenient History

Following General MacArthur’s brilliant Inchon Landing during the Korean War, U.S. led forces momentarily held the upper hand. Then the Red Chinese invaded Korea to protect the North Korean regime. They dared do so only because the Truman administration had prevented General MacArthur from taking out the Yalu river bridges.

So U.S. soldiers fought (and died against) the Communist Chinese, while carrying out a “police action” ordered by the UN. And later these Red Chinese invaders would be rewarded with a seat on the UN Security Council, whose mission ostensibly is to police the world.

And the Trump administration would ask the Communist Chinese dictators for help in restraining North Korea. Yet, in his September 19, 2017 UN speech, President Trump protested a socialist dictatorship in Venezuela. Something smells!

Multiculturalism Exposed

In 2015, following deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, congressmen floated several proposals to pause and even limit refugee immigration from Syria. More than half of the state governors said they would not accept Syrian refugees.

However, President Obama, supported by fellow liberals, objected that such action “is offensive and contrary to American values.” In doing so, he was defending the politically correct agenda of multiculturalism.

Gauging by the liberal reaction, it was no surprise that when President Trump took office in January 2017 and ordered a temporary halt on immigration from certain Middle East countries, organizations such as the ACLU would oppose any such restrictions in successful court challenges.

However, the claim that an American founding principle demands an open door policy toward mass immigration from diverse cultures is a recently contrived myth. In fact, it’s a subversive rewriting of history.

Reacting to the Obama claim, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin provided an excellent summary of the opinions of America’s Founding Fathers regarding immigration. As she showed, they were opposed to importing cultural diversity and would have abhorred the goal of “multiculturalism.”

Our Founding Fathers wanted immigration to support a distinctly American culture, a culture that could be counted on to support the principles of freedom as derived from the lessons of Western history.

Indeed, as Malkin wrote: “Madison argued plainly that America should welcome the immigrant who could assimilate, but exclude the immigrant who could not readily ‘incorporate himself into our society.’”

And she recounted an even more explicit statement by George Washington: “George Washington, in a letter to John Adams, similarly emphasized that immigrants should be absorbed into American life so that ‘by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people.’”

At the birth of the American experiment in freedom, our Founding Fathers knew from their study of history that cultural diversity in a nation is not a strength but a burden and often a source of major conflict.

We highly recommend reading Malkin’s entire article: “Immigration and Our Founding Fathers’ Values.” But then go a critical step further.

The Critical Lesson

Malkin offers only ideological arguments to oppose the multiculturalism assault in an ostensible battle with “No-limits liberals.” But this “safe ideological approach,” the norm with most popular conservative writers, conceals an immense driving danger, thus failing to sound the clear trumpet called for in 1 Corinthians 14:8.

Indeed, further research shows that Internationalist Insiders and their foundations are the drivers of both “the open borders movement” and “multiculturalism.” Their clear objective with these programs is to gain unaccountable power. And the pathway to their ultimate success requires the destruction of the culture necessary to support republican (rule of law) government and the associated undermining of America’s ability to resist totalitarian world government.

We summarize the “open borders” part of that story in Chapter 7 “Immigration Reform” of our Media-Controlled Delusion booklet. As visitors will see, even the front-line drivers are not limited to liberals.

For example, the above Chapter 7 recounts the support given by the Wall Street Journal. The late Robert L. Bartley served as its editorial page editor for 30 years. While adopting the image of a conservative free-market Republican, in 1979 Bartley was invited to join the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations. In a 2001 editorial, entitled “Open NAFTA Borders? Why Not?” Bartley wrote:

Reformist Mexican President Vicente Fox raises eyebrows with his suggestion that over a decade or two NAFTA should evolve into something like the European Union, with open borders for not only goods and investment but also people. He can rest assured that there is one voice north of the Rio Grande that supports his vision. To wit, this newspaper….

Indeed, during the immigration debate of 1984 we suggested an ultimate goal to guide passing policies — a constitutional amendment: “There shall be open borders.

Origins of Multiculturalism

The public advocates of revolutionary change often wear the liberal cloak and offer ideological arguments to support their agenda. However, if we “follow the money” we can recognize the real drivers and their goals.

Historian Oswald Spengler in his classic Decline of the West astutely concluded:

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist, movement, that has not operated in the interest of money, in the directions indicated by money, and for the time permitted by money — and that, without the idealist amongst its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

In a 1992 article, Father James Thornton observed: “Though wild-eyed it definitely is, multiculturalism has Establishment support through the lavishly financed programs of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and other tax-supported and tax-exempt organizations.”

And multiculturalism also follows the strategy advocated by Italian Communist theorist Antonio Gramsci for achieving “cultural hegemony” over a nation. The first phase in his strategy is to undermine all elements of traditional culture.

Gramsci’s thinking, perpetuated by his disciples, has had significant impact on revolutionary organizations in America today, as well as on their big-money sponsors. Rudi Dutschke, one of Gramsci’s disciples, described the strategy of culture war as conducting “the long march through the institutions.”

In short, our point is that one cannot oppose revolutionary programs effectively by getting caught up in merely debating their public proposals. Ignoring the driving conspiratorial agenda is simply a no-win strategy, a widespread practice that neutralizes conservatives. Instead, we need to help others recognize the pervasive cultural attack, how it’s organized, and its real totalitarian purpose.

Just One Example

A 2004 Department of Education publication, “ACHIEVING DIVERSITY: RACE-NEUTRAL ALTERNATIVES IN AMERICAN EDUCATION,” includes these introductory remarks:

The diversity question in America now is not “Whether?” but “How?” The Supreme Court’s decisions in the Michigan affirmative action litigation affirm that our shared commitment to diversity is both compelling and just when pursued within lawful parameters. In light of these decisions, President George W. Bush has challenged the education community to develop innovative ways to achieve diversity in our schools without falling back upon illegal quotas. Most educational leaders, particularly at the postsecondary level, agree with the importance of this goal. [Emphasis added.]

Of course, they do. The reason why America became saddled with an unconstitutional Department of Education was to mold public education to achieve revolutionary goals, using federal money as a carrot and stick.

Among the report’s introductory remarks, we see the George W. Bush administration’s stamp of approval:

President George W. Bush has said that diversity is one of America’s greatest strengths and has encouraged the development of race-neutral alternatives to achieve diversity in educational institutions.

Using the federal hammer to promote commonsense racial opportunity no longer masks fed-gov’s primary diversity objective. Indeed, multiculturalist pressure disparages assimilation into America’s defining culture, while glorifying other cultures, including homosexuality — you name it.

But if Americans are asked to oppose such programs as merely misguided, who will prepare himself for the battle? Indeed, it is necessary to understand the big picture before there will be sufficient alarm to organize the needed resistance.

Voter-Supplied Backbone Needed!

On May 3rd, the House approved a massive $1.07 trillion appropriations bill to finish off the last 5 months of FY 2017 (which ends on September 30th). The Senate followed suit the next day, and on May 5th President Trump signed it into law.

In any omnibus spending bill, there is good mixed with the bad. That’s one reason why omnibus appropriations are so destructive — the “good” in the bill makes it easier to obtain congressional support. And proponents of this measure argued that there was something in this legislation for everyone — except, of course, for those who have to pay the bill and whose liberty is threatened by the federal monster.

It is easy to assess the 1,665-page measure, the product of a “bipartisan deal,” from the fact that only 15 House Democrats opposed it. The good news is that GOP support was split 131 in favor to 103 against. (In the Senate, the only opposition came from 18 Republican Senators.)

AP (5-3-17) reported that both President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan “declared victory, but the opinions of top party leaders were not shared by the rank and file…. Negotiators on the bill say it looks pretty much like the measure would have looked like if it had been ironed out last year under Obama — save for Trump’s add-ons for the Pentagon and the border.”

Why did 103 House Republicans buck their party leadership to vote against this measure? Certainly, not because they are all committed constitutionalists. It’s because they know they have to face the voters back home and ward off any challenges to their reelection.

This shows that an organized effort to build a much better informed electorate can still help Americans fix the direction of the House and unleash its power to battle the other branches effectively.

Wielding the Power of the Purse

Two widely perpetuated myths provide cover for the House’s unwillingness to use its power of the purse to trim spending. The first is the notion that when pushed against deadlines the House needs to include all 12 appropriations measures in a single omnibus measure for an up-or-down vote. With an omnibus bill, the big spenders can use the specter of a government-wide shutdown to scare a public increasingly dependent on federal spending in order to obtain congressional support.

In reality, the House could easily schedule several independent votes and play hardball with one or more of the areas. In fact, in the case of the just completed FY 2017 appropriations, the least controversial of the 12 regular measures — Military Construction, the Department of Veteran Affairs — was passed and became law last September.

In the new 115th Congress, the House passed appropriations for the Department of Defense on March 8. There was no need for the House to include that measure again in an omnibus measure: A tough House would demand that the Senate deal with the House bill already before it. The bottom line is that we need to insist that our representatives refuse to support omnibus appropriations measures.

The Compromise Myth

The other destructive myth is an ostensible need for compromise. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated it recently when he stated that spending bills “cannot be done by one party alone.” The idea that appropriation legislation has to be a compromise with socialists, as happened here, is a sure road to our destruction.

The Founding Fathers gave the House the power of the purse so that an informed public could use its leverage with their elected representatives to give government its marching orders.

Separate votes on the 12 appropriations measures would help restore the House’s leverage. Unfortunately, that is not the program of the House leadership. House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks often of returning to regular order (12 independent votes), but Ryan and his GOP predecessors are always willing to kick this can down the road to the following year.

The Usual Charade

Once the FY2017 appropriations were completed, the White House sent Congress a proposed budget for FY2018. Although presidential budgets are merely an administration’s statement of priorities, in no way binding on Congress, the Trump budget is instructive.

The plan proposes to balance the budget in 10 years, while allowing next year’s deficit to increase. We’ve heard such promises many times before. Moreover, as along as the notion persists that federal spending must be a compromise with socialists, such a projection is certainly nonsense. And it’s certainly nonsense with the current Congress and media-controlled voter understanding.

Of course, Democratic leaders immediately railed against the plan’s proposed cuts, thereby helping to create the illusion that the budget is fiscally conservative.

Our real leverage is in helping others understand the issues and the voting record of their congressman. Building informed constituent pressure is the key to obtaining a Congress responsive to the Constitution. And sharing our online scorecard for an individual congressman or printed copies is a great way to start.

[Note: Once there are enough significant votes for us to update our scorecard for the current session of Congress, the House and Senate votes on the above $1.07 trillion “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017” will certainly be included. In the meantime, please use these links to the official voting records for each chamber: House Roll Call 249 (5-3-17) and Senate Vote 121 (5-4-17). (Both are still misleadingly titled as the HIRE Vets Act, the vehicle used by the House).]

Renegotiate NAFTA? No Way! — Get US out!

“Making good on a campaign promise, the Trump administration formally told Congress Thursday that it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico….

“Last month, White House aides spread word that Trump was ready to pull out of NAFTA. Within hours, the president reversed course and said that he’d seek a better deal first.”
— “Trump administration announces plans to renegotiate NAFTA,” AP, 5-18-17

NAFTA has unquestionably exacerbated U.S. manufacturing and capital flight, with a corresponding decline in quality jobs and middle class opportunity.

However, “trade pacts” such as NAFTA involve much more than lowering tariff barriers to regional trade. They set up governing institutions, contrary to our Constitution. And improving prosperity through increased trade is never the objective.

Indeed, the discussion of NAFTA as a mere trade agreement acts as a smokescreen, obscuring the fact that NAFTA is an Internationalist-designed trap targeting our national independence and freedom.

The national press omits any mention of the real reason that Internationalists worked so hard to have the U.S. accept NAFTA. Although NAFTA was sold as a conservative “free trade” agreement, its real purpose was to erode the sovereignty of independent nations with an ultimate goal of capturing them under a totalitarian world government ruled by elites. Recall that the precursor stages to the European Union (e.g., the Common Market) were misleading sold as just an economic arrangement.

Progressive Regionalization

Rather than trying to deceive the public into submitting to a world authority in one step, the Internationalists have promoted a “regionalism” strategy, modeled on the successful tactic use to ensnare nations in the European Union. The Fall 1991 issue of the CFR’s [Council on Foreign Relations] Foreign Affairs confirmed that the Internationalists saw NAFTA as following in the EU’s footsteps:

The creation of trinational dispute-resolution mechanisms and rule-making bodies on border and environmental issues may also be embryonic forms of more comprehensive structures. After all, international organizations and agreements like GATT and NAFTA by definition minimize assertions of sovereignty in favor of a joint rule-making authority.

Both David Rockefeller (former CFR chairman) and CFR heavyweight Henry Kissinger lobbied in the nation’s press for NAFTA, candidly claiming that NAFTA was a steppingstone to something larger. In a 1993 column that appeared in the July 18 Los Angeles Times, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared:

It [NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere…. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.

A few months later, David Rockefeller championed the agreement in the Wall Street Journal: “Everything is in place — after 500 years — to build a true ‘new world’ in the Western Hemisphere,” Rockefeller enthused, adding “I don’t think that ‘criminal’ would be too strong a word to describe … rejecting NAFTA.”

Submitting to WTO “Authority”

The World Trade Organization is another element of the elitist architecture for ruling the world. A recent news report illustrates how U.S. decision-making has been delegated to a body over which Americans have no control:

Mexico can impose annual trade sanctions worth $163.23 million against the United States after winning a dispute over trade in tuna fish, a World Trade Organization arbitrator ruled on Tuesday….

However, the ruling could be overturned later this year if a subsequent WTO decision finds the United States has stopped discriminating against tuna caught by its southern neighbor. — “WTO lets Mexico slap trade sanctions on U.S. in tuna dispute,” Reuters, 4-25-17

The “Just Promoting Trade” Deception Continues

The Peterson Institute, a “think tank” named after Peter G. Peterson, Chairman Emeritus of the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has long been a driver of “progressive regionalization” under the cover of promoting trade. Indeed, the opening AP report cites comments from Gary Hufbauer, member of the CFR and former VP of the CFR, 1997-98, lending credence to the pretext that NAFTA is just an orderly way to promote regional trade:

Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said the United States could seek modest “technocratic” changes, including provisions to update NAFTA to reflect technologies that have emerged since the original agreement was negotiated.

In 1994, Hufbauer had co-authored a study for the Institute, entitled “Western Hemisphere Economic Integration.”

For further explanation of the deceptive Internationalist strategy of “progressive regionalism,” of which NAFTA is a part, please see Chapter 6, “Free Trade Pacts” in our booklet Media-Controlled Delusion. Chapter 6 concludes:

[T]he so-called national debate over trade totally ignores the real purpose of post-World War II regional trade pacts — to create unaccountable regional authorities at the expense of the sovereignty of the nation-state. Our national survival requires that this agenda be exposed, understood, and defeated.

Renegotiating NAFTA is not the road to prosperity. Instead, validating NAFTA through renegotiation strengthens the Internationalist power grab targeting our survival as a free nation.

Ryan-TrumpCare

“[M]y plan … unapologetically seeks to apply our nation’s timeless principles … to today’s challenges. It does so in a way that honors our historic commitment to strengthening the social safety net for those who need it most…. It fixes what is broken in our health-care system without breaking what is working.” [Emphasis added.]
— Paul Ryan, Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, 2011

“Scott Pelley: Universal health care? Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” [Emphasis added.]
— 60 Minutes, 9-27-15

The claim that the federal government should provide welfare has no basis in the design of America’s Founders. However, socialists rely on precisely that notion to create an ever-larger federal monster.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone in politics today acknowledges that to make America great again (and safeguard our liberties) we must get the federal government entirely out of the health care and health insurance businesses.

Ravages of Obamacare

Obamacare took federal welfare and control of the health insurance market a giant step forward:

“The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage to about 20 million more Americans by setting up state exchanges, where people could buy insurance with subsidies based on their income, and by giving states federal money to expand Medicaid to more of their populations.” — Yahoo News, 3-10-17

Since the law’s inception, Republicans have campaigned on the need to repeal Obamacare. Unfortunately, many have also embraced the goal of replacing it, thereby affirming that Obamacare addressed a legitimate need. More than a year ago, Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) correctly emphasized: “Replacing Obamacare is just actually replacing it with another government-run program and I think some of us as conservatives don’t want the government to be running that.” — Roll Call, 1-7-16

Bipartisan Treason

For decades, both parties have supported unconstitutional federal expansion.

One astute analyst recently assailed the Republicans for regularly following a ratchet pattern. On the campaign trail, they rail against Democrat-supported big-government. But once they gain the majority, their leadership simply adopts the previous socialist inroads as the baseline, makes a few tweaks, and calls it progress.

Opposition limited to defending against further expansion of federal authority can only lead to disaster. Major rollbacks must be the goal.

The American Health Care Act (AHCA)

So now that the Republicans control the White House as well as the House and the Senate, what about their proposal, the American Health Care Act?

Presented as part of a GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, the AHCA would do neither. More than a dozen congressmen protested the betrayal:

“[M]embers of the House Freedom Caucus, backed by conservative Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, have said that it doesn’t keep faith with the GOP’s promise to unravel Obamacare.” — Roll Call, 3-10-17

“‘It’s Obamacare in a different format,’ Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio … said in a phone interview.” — The Atlantic.com, 3-6-17

“The House Republican leadership plan — quite frankly it is the largest welfare program that Republicans have sponsored in the history of the Republican Party.” — Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), “Rep. Mo Brooks: AHCA ‘Largest Welfare Program’ Sponsored By GOP,” MSNBC interview, 3-16-17, on YouTube

Conservative Review Senior Editor Daniel Horowitz makes a strong case that the AHCA is actually worse politics and policy than Obamacare. In a March 7th article, “RINO-Care: A more insolvent version of Obamacare … except this time GOP owns it,” Horowitz points out that the Ryan plan, with strong support from President Trump, would leave most of the regulatory structure and the exchanges in place.

And once the Republicans take ownership of this massive entitlement expansion, the challenge to undo the damage increases dramatically.

See No Evil

Yet the betrayal is even worse. Socialism is not a misguided humanitarian plan promoted by do-gooders. It is an evil deception. The humanitarian pretext cleverly serves to advance and cloak a totalitarian power grab.

Such is especially the case with socialized medicine. The socialist breakthrough came in 1965 with the enactment of King-Anderson (Medicare), but only after decades of infiltration and preparation by Fabian Socialist organizers, their Americans for Democratic Action front, and radical union organizer Walter Reuther. (See Media-Controlled Delusion, Chapter 1 Socialized Medicine and Code Blue, by Edward R. Annis, M.D., past president of the A.M.A.)

In a February 19 post, “Repeal and Replace (Big Brother!),” before the details of the Ryan plan became known, we predicted: “[T]hose expecting real progress will be deceived, because the media reports and political claims carefully avoid what is essential for the public to understand.” And what are those omissions? We identified three, quoted from our from Media-Controlled Delusion booklet:

“First, almost no one dares mention that the Constitution does not permit any federal involvement in health care (other than to provide for the military and its own employees).”

“Next, federal involvement locks in the third-party payer system (where someone other than the patient pays for even routine costs). The third-party payer system bears a good share of the responsibility for ballooning costs. Another primary source of rising costs is the immense federal bureaucracy created to manage the system.”

“By far the most serious omission in the health care ‘debate,’ however, is its failure to address the revolutionary organization, the deceptions, and the ulterior motive driving the steady expansion of federal authority…. The revolutionary socialist network extends back more than a century. The goal of this network is central control of virtually every human activity (socialism) and world government.” [Emphasis added.]

What to Do?

Currently, there is nowhere near a majority in Congress with the will to do the right thing — get the government out. Many Republicans will seek compromise with liberals in violation of the Constitution, claiming they are negotiating the best deal possible.

But that is a betrayal, too. The deal may appear to slow down our enslavement, but it deceives the public. The only responsible course for a principled congressman is to vote against the continuation of unconstitutional programs.

Despite lobbying by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and House Speaker Ryan, a number of conservative congressmen steadfastly refused to support the Ryan plan. As we go to press, House leaders twice abandoned a scheduled vote due to insufficient support.

Achieving a majority of principled congressmen in Washington cannot occur until there is more understanding created back home. Former Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald (D-Georgia) showed that he could vote on principle and get re-elected, despite Establishment attacks, because his district had a strong base of informed voters.

As the patriot Robert Welch emphasized, “All we must find and build and use, to win, is sufficient understanding.” And that takes strong organization that is committed to correct principles and understands the forces working to enslave us.

The Betrayal Known as ‘Immigration Reform’

“If the president chooses to embrace an overhaul that lets [illegal] immigrants live and work in the country, it would represent a remarkable betrayal of many of his core supporters that comes just days after he ordered a crackdown aimed at deporting all undocumented [i.e. illegal] immigrants….

“It is unclear why Mr. Trump chose to suddenly contemplate changing direction. Nor is it clear whether the shift will be a lasting one that results in real efforts to build a coalition in Congress behind a comprehensive immigration overhaul that provides what conservatives have long derided as amnesty.”
— “Trump Seesaws on Legal Status for Undocumented Immigrants,”— New York Times, March 1, 2017

The American people have long wanted our federal immigration laws enforced. But somehow that seems too difficult for our government to handle.

Is that because enforcing immigration law is really difficult? Is it like rocket science? Have we still not figured out how to do it?

No, that is not the problem. We know very well how to do it. For example, over 20 years ago the official, bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (widely referred to as the “Jordan Commission”, after its chairwoman, the former Rep. Barbara Jordan) produced some very sound recommendations on how to control illegal immigration. Since then, technology to implement suggestions such as workplace verification of employability has only improved.

The fact that we’ve not really been following these suggestions or enforcing our immigration law shows therefore a lack of political will. Or, to be more accurate, an overabundance of political betrayal.

Semantic Confusion — a Crucial Weapon

A crucial weapon in this betrayal has been the phrase “immigration reform.” It is a time-honored tactic of revolutionaries — including those in Congress and in the media — to manipulate language so as to confuse relevant and important distinctions. For example, “undocumented worker” confuses the surface issue of not having certain valid papers, with the more basic and important issue of being in the country illegally.

The term “immigration reform” has been used, quite cleverly, to confuse very different problems: illegal immigration, and excessive legal immigration. The latter has increasingly been a problem ever since the 1965 amendments to our immigration law.

Most notably, the “chain migration” problem got a foothold through those amendments; and it has grown worse through later changes to the law. It is that problem, in fact, to which President Trump was referring, in his Feb. 28 speech to Congress, when he said that our immigration system needs to become (or more correctly, to get back to being) a “merit-based” system, that screens potential immigrants for merit.

Now, what both sides in the debate mean basically by “immigration reform” is a change to the law regarding who is allowed to reside here: The conservatives want to strengthen this law, in such problem areas as chain migration and visa lotteries; in contrast, the radical left want to see it emasculated, by adding an “amnesty” for illegals currently here.

This being the case, it is only this problem of excessive legal immigration that can, with logic and reason, be a target of “immigration reform.” Whereas the problem of illegal immigration is, and always has been, not a question of better law, but rather, essentially the need to enforce the law.

OK, but why would it be a clever move for the open borders revolutionaries to confuse these two issues together, under the one term “immigration reform”? That is because they want to convince us of what they have been chanting for years and years, that “immigration reform” cannot be truly “comprehensive”, cannot really fix “our immigration problem” (notice the singular), unless it “deals also” with the large number of illegal immigrants we have — by which, of course, they mean what conservatives call an “amnesty.”

Of course, that makes no intelligible sense: The way you deal with a problem of people breaking the law with impunity, is to do away with the impunity! To blame the law for the fact that it is not being enforced, is exactly parallel to, and as illogical as, blaming the Constitution for the fact that Congress is too morally challenged to observe it.

The pertinent question is therefore, “Do you really WANT immigration law, or not?” For to move to put something in the law that fundamentally neuters the law, such as an “amnesty,” is to imply you don’t really want the law. And that is not “reform”; on the contrary, it is demolition.

Buying Into the Deception

OK, but is this catastrophic confusion of enforcement-issue and law-issue something relevant to today’s news? Unfortunately, very much so.

Donald Trump campaigned on the need for immigration-law enforcement, and not the need for immigration-law change. Yet in his first speech to Congress (Feb. 28) — and even more so in comments he made earlier in the day — he changed tracks, indeed he changed trains completely.

Worse yet, the law-change train he jumped onto is that misdirected old train known as “immigration reform” — with all its baggage of betrayal. Earlier in the day, he spelled out more clearly what he had in mind:

Like his predecessors on the day of a State of the Union address, Mr. Trump hosted the journalists for what was supposed to be an unrecorded lunch to give them a sense of what he would tell Congress. But the conversation took a surprising turn when some of the anchors asked about his efforts to deport many of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. Without being prompted, Mr. Trump then raised the idea of legislation, noting that there had not been any comprehensive law passed by Congress on the subject since Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program in the 1980s.

He told the anchors it was time for a bill that would grant legal status to many of those in the country illegally as long as both sides compromised, similar to the legislation sought but never passed by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Mr. Trump said he recognized that it would cause him political problems with his conservative base voters, according to people in the room, but added that he thought he could keep them happy since they had stuck with him throughout last year’s Republican primaries.— “Ever a Showman, Donald Trump Keeps Washington Guessing,” New York Times, February 28, 2017

It is an interesting question, for Trump supporters, why he changed trains — and whether he can indeed “keep them happy” despite that shift. In the meantime, the urgent challenge is to keep him from dragging our nation onto that train in his wake.

In a Nutshell, the Case Against a Con-con

The proponents of an Article V constitutional convention tell us it’s necessary, to save the country. As confirmed opponents, we say that we must at all costs avoid it, to save the country — or at least, to save the Constitution. Yet, so far, it has not been the easiest thing in the world, to get a grasp of either side’s argument.

The burden of proof should surely be on the proponents of a major undertaking of this sort, which, though described in the Constitution, has yet to occur in our entire history. Instead, they lobby largely outside the public view for their unprecedented “solution” and seek no debate. All the more then, do we as opponents of an Article 5 “Con-con” need to identify and understand the principal objections, to help us carry the issue.

Alright, then, what is fundamentally wrong with the Article V Con-con push?

The Alleged Benefits

Let’s start with the alleged benefits of holding an “A5C” (Article V Con-con). The notion most successfully selling state legislatures on an A5C is the idea that THIS is the key to reigning in that out-of-control monster, our federal government. There are even claims that this part of Article V was put into the Constitution precisely as the solution that states might bring into service, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, should the federal government ever exceed its constitutional bounds.

This recently contrived mythos is outlandishly inaccurate. What Article V says it would call a convention to do, is to propose constitutional amendments. Therefore, to suggest that Article V was put into the Constitution in case the federal government needs reigning in is to suggest that amending the Constitution was considered the key to controlling the federal government.

Yet, almost everything the A5C proponents consider a transgression on the part of the federal government (e.g., spending to bust the budget), and that they claim an amendment would fix, is something the Constitution already outlaws! If the government were obeying NOW the clear mandates of the Constitution, none of these problems would be plaguing us!

Changing the Constitution is the wrong solution to an enforcement problem. The Constitution itself was designed to be, and explicitly portrays itself as, the chains for binding down the federal government.

Of course, we cannot just dismiss it as impossible, that some such amendment might have a beneficial effect. But the suggestion that legislators who disobey large swaths of the Constitution will somehow behave better when faced with an amendment, ought to have the burden of proof. Yet which of the A5C supporters has ever tried to prove this?

The “term limits” Con-con call is somewhat different: Instead of suggesting amendments are magically stronger than the Constitution itself, it suggests that Congress-persons who can run for re-election only so many times will magically behave better than those who can run any number of times. But folk who understand the meaning of “lame duck session” know that congress-people not subject to the ballot box are less likely to behave!

Not every call for an A5C claims, necessarily, that it will save us from government’s bursting of constitutional bounds. But every such call feels an obligation to downplay costs or risks that an A5C may present. And here, we shall see, is where proponents out-do themselves in making up fantastic claims.

The Danger

Proponents want to sell us the line that it is possible to put constraints, ahead of time, on an Article V constitutional convention — so that it will only consider certain topics, and perhaps only follow certain procedures. Yet, as Don Fotheringham explains so clearly and documents so tellingly, in America, the people, not legislatures, are sovereign — over constitutions as well as over governments. “We the People” wrote the Constitution; and that is who will propose amendments to it, or even total rewrites of it, if an Article V constitutional convention occurs.

Is that not what happens in every state today, when a state-constitutional convention is called? This popular-sovereignty principle is built into, not only the Preamble of our current Constitution, but also the very Declaration of Independence that brought the United States into being:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident … [t]hat 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 Forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The one historic example we have for a constitutional convention at the federal level, was the one that produced our current Constitution. For proponents of another federal convention, then, it is quite embarrassing that writing a new constitution was not what that first convention’s delegates were sent there to do: they were merely to discuss, debate, and possibly propose some amendments to the then-current Articles of Confederation. But, as James Madison emphasized, the delegates represented the People of the United States — not the state legislatures — and therefore they had autonomy from all legislatures, whether state or federal, in determining the scope as well as the rules of their convention.

So, as Don Fotheringham emphasizes, every state legislator needs to be aware that the same popular sovereignty that applies to any state-constitutional convention these days, would apply also if we should ever have another federal constitutional convention. And that convention would therefore be no more under the control of either Congress or the state legislatures than was that 1787 Convention, which providentially gave us a far more perfect constitution than any convention could be expected to compose today in an environment dominated by pro-Big government media.

Unreliable Protection

One objection that arises at this point sounds reasonable, until you think about it: Since around two-thirds of the state legislatures are dominated by Republicans — goes the claim — we can rest assured that no radical proposal that does away with the Second Amendment, say, or rewrites the whole Constitution, will be ratified by three fourths of the legislatures.

However, there are two false assumptions here: First, the objection overlooks that a constitutional convention has authority, not only to set its own rules, but also to rewrite the rules of how its proposals are to be ratified. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 did exactly that; if it had not, it would have been harder to get our present Constitution ratified!

But even if the A5C resists the temptation to change the ratification rules, that leaves us with the rules laid down in Article V. And there, Congress can choose either of two routes: ratification “by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof.”

As an example that proves how dangerous and uncontrollable the second route is, Utah, the most pro-Prohibition state in the union, ratified the amendment that repealed Prohibition! Conventions, whether state or federal, are innately uncontrollable creatures; and thus, special interests may easily “hijack” them for purposes the People oppose.

Requested Actions:

Contact the legislators in your state and urge them to oppose ANY call for an Article V Constitutional Convention. 2. Share this post with other concerned citizens.

For more support, see our “Expose the Article V Con-con Fraud” campaign page, particularly the opinions of constitutional experts. Useful also, if confronting abusive, ad hominem arguments from the proponents, is an excellent recent piece by Wynne Coleman, of “No Convention of States NC,” on the growing use of such tactics. (Also, see the Heckler-Levin video rant linked therein.)

Repeal and Accept (Big Brother!)

“The firm precept of dialectic materialism, whether expressed as one step backward for two steps forward, or two short steps backward for one long step forward, has always made these concessions to the necessity of deception an absolute requirement and precaution in all Communist progress.”
— Robert Welch, American Opinion, January 1962

To make America truly great again, Americans must force the federal government back under the chains of the Constitution — get the government out of where it does not belong. In just one area — health care — that means completely reversing course, taking Big Brother out of the picture.

As we wrote in Chapter 1 “Socialized Medicine” of our 2015 booklet Media-Controlled Delusion: “Our health care system does need reform — the reform of getting the federal government out.” But that won’t happen until more of the public understands crucial omissions in the so-called health care debate.

GOP Control — What to Expect

With the GOP now in control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, many voters look forward to the GOP delivering on its six-year-old promises to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare. But those expecting real progress will be deceived, because the media reports and political claims carefully avoid what is essential for the public to understand. We quote from Media-Controlled Delusion:

“First, almost no one dares mention that the Constitution does not permit any federal involvement in health care (other than to provide for the military and its own employees). The once prominent constitutional objections to this usurpation of authority have long been ignored by Republicans and Democrats alike.”

“Next, federal involvement locks in the third-party payer system (where someone other than the patient pays for even routine costs). The third-party payer system bears a good share of the responsibility for ballooning costs. Another primary source of rising costs is the immense federal bureaucracy created to manage the system.”

“By far the most serious omission in the health care ‘debate,’ however, is its failure to address the revolutionary organization, the deceptions, and the ulterior motive driving the steady expansion of federal authority….

“The revolutionary socialist network extends back more than a century. The goal of this network is central control of virtually every human activity (socialism) and world government.” [Emphasis added.]

The humanitarian socialist pretext of caring for the downtrodden is just that — a pretext, a pretext for a power grab to make Americans dependent on Washington for their most basic needs.

That huge century-long revolutionary investment in government control won’t be reversed unless there is much greater public understanding of the powerful forces and subversive agenda promoting it. Until that happens, the political hue and cry of “Repeal and Replace” will at best mean a small step backwards while accepting much of the socialist progress of the long ObamaCare step — in short, net progress toward universal government-controlled health care.

“And that points to one of the most effective ways for revolutionaries to overcome resistance to a loss of liberty — gradualism — proceed in stages so that the end result is not universally obvious.”

We strongly urge readers to check out the linked Chapter 1 of Media-Controlled Delusion, acquaint themselves with the crucial media omissions, particularly the history of the socialized medicine drive, and then share this post widely.

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