Kurt Nimmo | September 29 2005
“President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process,” reports the Moonie Times, otherwise known as the Washington Times. “It wouldn’t be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action,” declared White House press secretary Scott McClellan. “Mr. McClellan was referring to a new, direct line of authority that would allow the president to place the Pentagon in charge of responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease.”
In other words, Bush wants to erase yet another constitutional amendment—the Tenth, which states “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—and he is using the misfortune of Katrina as an opportunistic wrecking ball. “Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour declined the president’s offer to federalize the state’s National Guard troops in the aftermath of Katrina. So Mr. Bush wants Congress to consider empowering the Pentagon with automatic control.” In other words, the misery and suffering of the people of Louisiana—deliberately exacerbated by FEMA and the Ministry of Homeland Security—will serve as a red carpet for Bush to systematically dismantle the cornerstone of the United States, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is, at minimum and as a start, a death knell for Posse Comitatus.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, according to the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy? to which Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
As members of the Constitutional Convention understood, the enemy of liberty and the people is unrestrained and unchecked government. Our Constitution limits the power of government. But as Franklin suspected, the people would be unable to keep a Republic, and eventually—as is its rapacious nature—government would usurp all power and relegate the Constitution to the dustbin of history.
Bush and his fascist cronies are determined to usher in an authoritarian state, a nightmarish high-tech police state, Orwell’s hobnail boot smashing a face forever. And the word “fascist” applies because, as Mussolini declared, “fascism is reaction” against the social and political theories of the 1789 French Revolution (and indeed the Magna Carta), whose early formulations had a major influence on our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
“Currently, the lead federal agency responsible for disaster relief is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has just 2,500 employees and is a division of the Homeland Security Department,” the Moonie Times continues. “Mr. Bush has suggested that a more appropriate agency is the Department of Defense (DoD), which has 1.4 million active-duty troops.” Bush spelled out, in his inimitable way, his plan to attack the Tenth Amendment: “I was speculating about was a scenario which would require federal assets to stabilize the situation—primarily DoD assets—and then hand back over to Department of Homeland Security.”
When Julius Caesar and the Roman army crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, this act of defiance—for standing armies were forbidden by law from entering Rome—ushered in the brutal military rule of Rome and set the once great empire on its path toward ultimate destruction, prompting Suetonius to utter his famous phrase: “the die is cast.”
Bush and his neocon cronies have marshaled in the beginning stages of a neo-feudal future long planned for us by the global elite and the corporatist plutocracy. In order to realize this tyranny, they must first completely emasculate and finally destroy the Constitution and convince the masses—most sufficiently dumbed-down through sub-standard education and anesthetized by an amoral consumerist culture—to accept military occupation and slavery. In a nation no longer anchored to a bedrock of set constitutional principles, it is a relatively small task to convince millions of people the government will protect them from evil terrorists and natural disasters (the former created in large part by the government and the latter at least scientifically possible for the government to unleash). As the horror show of military occupation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and to a lesser extent, Hurricane Rita) demonstrates, Bush and his global elite masters have decided now is the time to pull out all the stops.
As John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon—who served as inspiration for the founders—wrote in their collaborative work (Cato’s Letters, 1720-23), “corrupt ministers” (such as Bush and the neocons) engage in “fantastical wars” in order “to keep the minds of men in continual hurry and agitation, and under constant fears and alarms,” and thus frightened people “will agree to every wild demand made by those who are betraying them.”
As for standing armies, Trenchard and Gordon wrote:
It is certain, that all parts of Europe which are enslaved, have been enslaved by armies; and it is absolutely impossible, that any nation which keeps them amongst themselves can long preserve their liberties; nor can any nation perfectly lose their liberties who are without such guests: And yet, though all men see this, and at times confess it, yet all have joined in their turns, to bring this heavy evil upon themselves and their country….
Great empires cannot subsist without great armies, and liberty cannot subsist with them. As armies long kept up, and grown part of the government, will soon engross the whole government, and can never be disbanded; so liberty long lost, can never be recovered. Is not this an awful lesson to free states, to be vigilant against a dreadful condition, which has no remedy.
Unfortunately, as a nation and a people, we are no longer “vigilant against a dreadful condition.” Most of us know little if nothing about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and we are all too willing—when confronted with terrorism so patently fabricated and false—to relinquish our liberty. Few of us recall the words of Thomas Jefferson: “A free republic will never keep a standing army to execute its laws. It must depend upon the support of its citizens.”
Sadly, we are no longer a citizenry capable of understanding the foundation and underlying principles of the Constitution—government will, if not checked, always endeavor to steal our freedom and hold us in slavery.
No doubt, if Franklin returned and witnessed our ignorance and stupendous intellectual laziness, he might likely declare: since we are no longer capable of upholding a Republic—let alone comprehend what it is—we do not deserve one.
“President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process,” reports the Moonie Times, otherwise known as the Washington Times. “It wouldn’t be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action,” declared White House press secretary Scott McClellan. “Mr. McClellan was referring to a new, direct line of authority that would allow the president to place the Pentagon in charge of responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease.”
In other words, Bush wants to erase yet another constitutional amendment—the Tenth, which states “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—and he is using the misfortune of Katrina as an opportunistic wrecking ball. “Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour declined the president’s offer to federalize the state’s National Guard troops in the aftermath of Katrina. So Mr. Bush wants Congress to consider empowering the Pentagon with automatic control.” In other words, the misery and suffering of the people of Louisiana—deliberately exacerbated by FEMA and the Ministry of Homeland Security—will serve as a red carpet for Bush to systematically dismantle the cornerstone of the United States, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is, at minimum and as a start, a death knell for Posse Comitatus.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, according to the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy? to which Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
As members of the Constitutional Convention understood, the enemy of liberty and the people is unrestrained and unchecked government. Our Constitution limits the power of government. But as Franklin suspected, the people would be unable to keep a Republic, and eventually—as is its rapacious nature—government would usurp all power and relegate the Constitution to the dustbin of history.
Bush and his fascist cronies are determined to usher in an authoritarian state, a nightmarish high-tech police state, Orwell’s hobnail boot smashing a face forever. And the word “fascist” applies because, as Mussolini declared, “fascism is reaction” against the social and political theories of the 1789 French Revolution (and indeed the Magna Carta), whose early formulations had a major influence on our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
“Currently, the lead federal agency responsible for disaster relief is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has just 2,500 employees and is a division of the Homeland Security Department,” the Moonie Times continues. “Mr. Bush has suggested that a more appropriate agency is the Department of Defense (DoD), which has 1.4 million active-duty troops.” Bush spelled out, in his inimitable way, his plan to attack the Tenth Amendment: “I was speculating about was a scenario which would require federal assets to stabilize the situation—primarily DoD assets—and then hand back over to Department of Homeland Security.”
When Julius Caesar and the Roman army crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, this act of defiance—for standing armies were forbidden by law from entering Rome—ushered in the brutal military rule of Rome and set the once great empire on its path toward ultimate destruction, prompting Suetonius to utter his famous phrase: “the die is cast.”
Bush and his neocon cronies have marshaled in the beginning stages of a neo-feudal future long planned for us by the global elite and the corporatist plutocracy. In order to realize this tyranny, they must first completely emasculate and finally destroy the Constitution and convince the masses—most sufficiently dumbed-down through sub-standard education and anesthetized by an amoral consumerist culture—to accept military occupation and slavery. In a nation no longer anchored to a bedrock of set constitutional principles, it is a relatively small task to convince millions of people the government will protect them from evil terrorists and natural disasters (the former created in large part by the government and the latter at least scientifically possible for the government to unleash). As the horror show of military occupation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and to a lesser extent, Hurricane Rita) demonstrates, Bush and his global elite masters have decided now is the time to pull out all the stops.
As John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon—who served as inspiration for the founders—wrote in their collaborative work (Cato’s Letters, 1720-23), “corrupt ministers” (such as Bush and the neocons) engage in “fantastical wars” in order “to keep the minds of men in continual hurry and agitation, and under constant fears and alarms,” and thus frightened people “will agree to every wild demand made by those who are betraying them.”
As for standing armies, Trenchard and Gordon wrote:
It is certain, that all parts of Europe which are enslaved, have been enslaved by armies; and it is absolutely impossible, that any nation which keeps them amongst themselves can long preserve their liberties; nor can any nation perfectly lose their liberties who are without such guests: And yet, though all men see this, and at times confess it, yet all have joined in their turns, to bring this heavy evil upon themselves and their country….
Great empires cannot subsist without great armies, and liberty cannot subsist with them. As armies long kept up, and grown part of the government, will soon engross the whole government, and can never be disbanded; so liberty long lost, can never be recovered. Is not this an awful lesson to free states, to be vigilant against a dreadful condition, which has no remedy.
Unfortunately, as a nation and a people, we are no longer “vigilant against a dreadful condition.” Most of us know little if nothing about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and we are all too willing—when confronted with terrorism so patently fabricated and false—to relinquish our liberty. Few of us recall the words of Thomas Jefferson: “A free republic will never keep a standing army to execute its laws. It must depend upon the support of its citizens.”
Sadly, we are no longer a citizenry capable of understanding the foundation and underlying principles of the Constitution—government will, if not checked, always endeavor to steal our freedom and hold us in slavery.
No doubt, if Franklin returned and witnessed our ignorance and stupendous intellectual laziness, he might likely declare: since we are no longer capable of upholding a Republic—let alone comprehend what it is—we do not deserve one.
