From Petitions to Articles of Freedom

On April 19, my fellow delegates--Michael Lunnon and Dave Batcheller--and I will be serving the Articles of Freedom on our federal representatives, and on the governor's office in Santa Fe. At the same time, delegates and/or their representatives from every state will be serving the same document.

The Articles of Freedom are an outcome of the Continental Congress 2009--a gathering of delegates from each of 48 states--who congressed in Illinois to deliberate upon 14 Petitions for Redress of Grievances and determined that the servant government was in violation of our rights as protected by the Constitution, primarily by not responding to the First Amendment right to Petition for Redress of Grievances. Here is the text of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people to peacably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

At least fourteen petitions have been formally brought to all three branches of government over the past 15 years, and CC2009 concluded that no response whatsover was recieved. Therefore, members of our government are in violation of their oaths of office which require them to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Given this pattern of lack of response, and the cynical disregard shown to the Constitution by members of government (recall Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who laughed at the thought that government should obey the Constitution?), the time for Petitions has passed and the time has come for the people to assert their rights and to give instructions to the servant government.

The Articles of Freedom not only document these violations to the Constitution, and the disrespect shown by our government to the Supreme Law of the Land; they also document numerous specific violations to every article in the Constitution and provide instructions to all three branches of the federal government, and to the Sovereign States, in order to bring government into obedience to their employers, We the People of the United States.

In addition, the Articles of Freedom also provide suggestions for civic action by the people, and provide a pledge taken by the delegates who signed the Articles, as well as a pledge to be signed by members of the people. That second pledge is an oath or affirmation for individuals to sign onto the process of calling the servant government to account:



"In full view of the Creator as my Witness, I hereby pledge my signature and vow to join with a goodly number of millions of Americans to hold our elected and appointed officials accountable for all of their violations, with a firm reminder that each one has sworn an Oath (or Affirmation) to Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution for the United States of America. In seeking to hold them accountable, I shall hold myself accountable to do the same.

We the undersigned renounce and condemn any and all INITIATION of violent force and will pursue all lawful and Constitutional means to fulfill our duty.

I place my name here and shall participate as an Eternal Record of the Will of the People to be Free."


The Pledge and Signature Form may be found here.


And here is an episode of Judge Andrew Napolitano's Freedom Watch in which Bob Shulz, Executive Director of We the People Foundation, and delegate from New York, explains the process of petitioning for Redress of Grievances and the reason that we are now past the time of Petitions.





Take part in the preservation of your Liberty! Sign the Pledge. Participate in nationwide civic action, and defend the Constitution. As Bob Shulz says, "The Constitution does not defend itself." It's our job as freedom loving Americans to protect and defend it.

The Gift of the Wicked Child

"Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming

of the great and awesome day of the L-rd.

And he shall shall turn the hearts of the parents to their children,

and the hearts of the children to their parents;

lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction."

--Malachi 3:23 - 24 (quoted from the Haggadah)

"Four times the Torah instructs us " and you shall tell your child on that day . . ."

From this we may infer that there are four kinds of children--

the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask."

--Hagaddah

It's amazing that a week has passed since I last posted. Much has happened, but despite a totaled car (no one seriously hurt), cleaning for Passover, and other happenings, Pesach came and we had a beautiful Seder. It was small this year--ten people gathered around our table--and we engaged the Hagaddah (The Telling) together, having in-depth discussions at several places. This is important, for each one of us has the obligation to leave the Seder with the understanding that "in every generation each one of us must feel as if we had personally come forth from Egypt."

As always, familiar words that form the background year after year, can suddenly leap off the page as we fulfil the mitzvah to tell our children "on that day" the every absorbing story of redemption and freedom. Several passages in the Hagaddah did fair leap out at me this year, and one was the story of the Four Children and it danced in my head throughout, until late in the Seder, after the Afikomen and Birchat ha-Mazon, became linked to a passage from Malachi about the shadowly Elijah the Prophet.

"The wise child asks: 'What are the laws, precepts,

and observances that G-d has commanded us?'

In response we should explain the observances

of Passover thoroughly, the very last one of which

is after the Afikomen, we do not turn to other

kinds of entertainment."

The wise child is the easy one. This is the teacher-pleaser, the delight of every parent; the child who is interested in observing Pesach (and doing everything else) the right way the first time. This is a kid who learns from the experience of others, and so does not have to bang his head away on the hard stones of the wall of personal experience. Not much of challenge, this one!

"The wicked child asks: 'What does this service mean to you?' He says

'to you' and not 'to us', placing himself outside of the People Israel.

Therefore we should blunt his teeth, saying: 'It is because of what G-d did

for me when I went forth from Egypt'--that is for me and not for

you--for had you been there, you would not have been redeemed."

Now this child is the real challenge. For whatever reason, he is the one who does not want to be at the Seder, the one who believes that redemption from slavery does not apply to him. Which of us can say that we have never been this child? Which of us would admit that we have never thought about it in such a way? In many ways, this child is my favorite, for he has excluded himself and yet is there at the Seder nevertheless, asking questions, wanting to be part of it. This child presents us not only with a challenge, but with a gift.

To appreciate the gift of the "wicked" child, we must dig deep and realize that no one is free unless all are free--even those whose ideas and questions rock our worlds, disturbing our complacency. Liberty means that we cannot violate the rights of those who live differently and who challenge our beliefs. The "wicked" child is the one who in refusing to march to our tune, brings us to new insight into the awesome gift of freedom. The "wicked" children are those nails that stick up, begging to be hammered down. And the enslaved often do just that, destroying the precious spark of an independent mind. The 'wicked' children are already living liberty; they are outside of Mitzrayim --(the narrow places of slavery)--and are capable of teaching those who would consider their question at each year's Seder.

Many of our teachers have understood the 'wicked child' in a positive light, seeing him as the sensitive and idealistic child in search of the meaning at the core of the stories we tell. In various ways they suggest that the wicked child is really asking: Here you stand at the shores of the sea, having come through the birth waters into freedom, and yet your service is as vacuous as the slave-labor of Egypt. Where is your Kavanah (the understanding, the intention of your action)? Or is freedom really so meaningless to you that you remain enslaved in the face of miracles?

The wicked children are the challengers of slavery to unthinking routine and drugery; they insist that we open our eyes and see that with freedom, the boundaries of our world expand to the horizon and beyond, to notice that daily we walk sightless among miracles*. And that the greatest miracle of all is the human gift of freedom that challenges us to live up to our greatest abilities.

*The Jewish concept of 'miracle' does not entail the suspension of natural law. Rather, miracles are insight into the workings of natural law to further the life and happiness of those who notice them.

"The simple child asks: "What is this?"

And we say: "With a strong hand and a mighty arm,

were we redeemed from the bondage of the Egyptians."

To the person of open simplicity, give a straightforward answer."

The simple child is the young and happy child, who asks simply and trusts a simple answer. There is no need to belabor the details, nor to challenge such a child. For he did not challenge you.

"With the child unable to ask, you must begin yourself, saying:

'This is because of what G-d did for me, when I went free out of Egypt.' "

If a child does not ask, we must begin ourselves to awaken their curiousity about why we celebrate the great festival of our freedom, in order to gently lead them to wonder about why this freedom is so important.

The Four Children remind us that people deal differently with ideas, and that we all find ourselves in the four different roles during our lives, and with respect to different challenges and events. There are those who are awake and want to be told what to do; there are those who are awake and want to understand the ideas behind what we do; there are those who are just waking up and wondering what we are doing; and there are those who are still sleeping and might need to be prodded to notice what we are doing.

And still, my favorite is the "wicked" child. And maybe it's because I often find myself in the role of the wicked child. Still. At my age, I have not yet developed the desire to do what I am told simply because I am told to do it.

There is a place in the world for the wicked child.

The wicked child may not have been redeemed because he was already free.

Perhaps it is he (or she, or me) who forces the turning of the hearts of the parents, and the hearts of the child, in order to prevent utter destruction.

Hoshia'na: Deliver Us!

As I have been cleaning for Pesach, I have been pondering.
Spring cleaning and turning the kitchen over--this is my pondering time.
Sometimes memories come, bittersweet.
And always, thoughts of the great story that we are still a part of.

Tonight, I was looking for an Orpah Haza song, and came upon a Hebrew version of Deliver Us! from The Prince of Egypt. I wanted to share it here. This is the theme of Zeman Cheruteinu--the Season of our Freedom.





This is so very powerful in the Hebrew,
but here also is the English.



Orpah's beautiful voice in two languages . . .

Deliver us! Somewhere where we can be free . . .

The Spring Break That Wasn't Spring

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

I missed Nearly Wordless Wednesday last week because I am getting tired of posting snow pictures. And I thought that surely this week, with it being the Rasta Jew's Spring Break, surely it would act like spring. Especially since the Astronomical First Day of Spring occured on the second Saturday of said Spring Break.

Sigh. Not this year. So this NWW features snow pictures once again.

Monday of the Spring Break that wasn't spring.

Umbrae loves the snow.

At least someone was happy!

And once again, Sandia Peak in snow.




















The Engineering Geek walks three dogs--in the snow.










First day of Spring. Anticipating a Road Trip, I had stayed the night in town, so that a friend and I could get out and go south to the sunshine. It was a good thing I did. Here is Henry the Big Red Truck parked at the hotel where I stayed . I-40 through the canyon was closed. I would have never gotten out!













After traversing snow-packed freeways--New Mexico has never learned to plow them when it starts snowing--we finally found sunshine between Socorro and Truth or Consequences.

But here, looking east from Emory Pass, more . . . need I say it? . . .snow.

Falling for Distractors

In testing parlance, a distractor is a possible answer that is intended to distract the testee's attention away from the central idea of the question or the central goal of the task. It is intended to give information on the ability of the subject to identify the main idea or goal, and as well, to maintain focus to completion.

In a focused debate, distractors are frowned upon, and those trained well in both logic and argumentation, become skillful at identifying them in order to avoid using them, and in order to parry them in a debate. However, those of us with "different minds" (as Temple Grandin so charmingly calls Aspies, etc.), no matter how well trained in logic, usually fumble the on-your-feet thinking part of such discussion, and can be distracted in to latching onto the distractor. This is why training and practice are mandatory for us.

And it gets worse when dealing with what passes for political debate currently, which is usually driven by partisan loyalties rather than full understanding of issues, and is focused on "talking points." Here, the object of the discussion is not to get to the bottom of an idea--in fact, ideas are assiduously ignored--rather, the goal is to score fictitious points for your team.
And since many Aspies do not get that, and we continue believing that the discussion is really to get to the bottom of an idea, and some of us like to argue, we often fall for the distractors in a political argument.

A perfect example happened in a series of exchanges between three libertarians and a partisan progressive on my Facebook Wall. I had posted a link to yesterday's blog entry--The Janus Face of Tyranny--there yesterday. The first comment was by Mark--who on the blog itself used to comment as 'Anonymous'--whose comment was a distractor intended to shift the discussion toward the administration and Democratic Party's talking points about the healthcare bill. In fact, it was such a distractor from the actual ideas outlined in the blog entry that I believe that Mark never got the point of the blog, or else he didn't bother to read it, so this morning I helpfully pointed it out for him. But not before I, too, succumbed to the almost irresistable urge to distraction.

Instead of addressing the historical comparison being made in the blog entry, Mark's first comment was a demand that since I don't like the so-called "healthcare bill", what would I do to "fix the system."

There were fourteen or fifteen comments already answering his question, which took the whole discussion into the simplified and somewhat unreal realm of talking points. "Fixing the system" was not what the blog entry was even about. Rather the point of the blog was that Pelosi's gambit to pretend not to vote on the bill by "deeming" it passed would awaken the anger of even more Americans at the incipient tyranny of such an action. The tyranny is not only in the legislation--which is about far more than healthcare; it is in how the Congress Critters intend to avoid responsibility for it, and at the same time consolidate their power.

You can read the whole blog to explore the other point I introduced: That the anger of the people at this kind of corruption is not partisan, and that the division between the political elite and the ordinary people who are expected to pay for their blindness, is rapidly assuming powder-keg proportions. There is indeed tyranny afoot here, and this is not the first time in the history of the world a government has become so blind to reality with severe and lasting consequences.

In any case I foolishly courteously but briefly answered Mark's question well into the comment thread, stating mostly that I thought that the answers provided by the two other bloggers were reasonably close to what I would have said with a few exceptions that I proceeded to outline. as far as I was concerned, the discussion was over.

But then I got another demand from Mark that I should come up with a solution to "fix the system", and the assertion that "we need to" stop a race to the bottom among insurance companies. These are talking points straight off of Moveon.org's playlist. And I finally cottoned on to the fact that this was no discussion to get to the bottom of a problem or an idea, at least not from Mark's perspective. In fact, strictly from reading his comments it's hard for me to tell whether or not he knows much about health insurance or healthcare at all.

In any case, these demands that I should come up with a solution to "fix the system" are in fact distractors. For I have never expressed a desire to have one centralized "system" for health care, nor am I unhappy with my insurance plan, which is the proximal target of this bill.

The distal target is for the federal government to take control of healthcare in this country, and to destroy any private insurance, as well as for it to gain control over the medical and financial records of the citizenry of the United States. The structure for this is in the bill, as well as much more having to do with education, the regulation of our diets, and other such that we do not even know about. And there will be more to come, because Obama, Pelosi and Reid have also stated that by "deeming the bill passed", they will then be able to change things in the bill afterwards. (!)

So I answered the second demand that I provide a solution this way:


1) I am not sure who this WE is that you keep talking about. Please define your terms. In a free country, WE don't have to do anything. Each individual determines who she will associate with (free association) and what she will do with her life. The obligation of the individual extend only to respecting the natural rights of others. Otherwise, it is a matter of choice.

2) Are you getting yourself and your family prepared for those economic hard times? 'Cause the "government" is really the people who pay taxes, and at a certain point they won't have any more wealth for the bureaucracy to take from them and it won't be worth it for them to work hard. Then a real race to the bottom will begin.


3) I think you misunderstand my courtesy in discussing your demand to be a concession to your premise that there ought to be one healthcare system controlled by the government. So let me clarify: I do not have to present any ideas for how to "fix the system" because:

a) I do not agree that there ought to BE one system controlled politically; and

b) I believe that the bill before Congress now is a monstrosity that is being "shoved through" for other purposes--(and that is, since you missed it, the main point of my blog post).This bill will not fix anything; and

c) It is you who want to create a system. You are free to do so. Just count me and any others who have other plans for our lives out of it. This is not a democracy. There should be no mob rule. If you want to make a system, go ahead and do it, and recruit others who want to participate. And determine how you will pay for it without forcing those who do not like it to do so.

I concluded by making a demand of my own--that on my Facebook page and my blog page, Mark should respond to the ideas in my blog post or to the three statements I made above.

I find talking points to be extremely boring. As a libertarian, my preference is that everything I do is for fun or profit. Or both. Talking points are neither.

The Janus Face of Tyranny

"Tyranny . . . What a Janus-faced object it is,

smirking at you on one side of its mask,

and shedding tears for you on the other."

--Patrick Henry, Speech on the Virginia Resolves

May 29, 1765

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.

In the past few days, the House Democrats, uncertain of getting even the simple majority of votes needed to get the Senate version of the so-called "Healthcare Bill" through the house, are now threatening to "deem the bill passed" without a vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that this would be within the rules.

But the question the party leadership is not answering: "Is it right?"

They say the Republicans have done it, as if this is a partisan matter. My instinctive response is right out of my mother's mouth: "So if the Republicans jump off a bridge, would you jump off right after them?" Frankly, I think the response would be wasted. The lady doth protest too much. And she lies more than Lady Macbeth ever did. As did the Republicans in their turn.

Avarice for power and the venality required to obtain it are not partisan sins. They belong to all politicians who wish to become royalty. The purpose of the statement is try to fool you and me, gentle reader. "Deeming" the bill to pass will give many Democrats in the House an out come the election, when they can claim that they never voted for an unpopular and unholy mess of a bill, and hope and pray that we are shortsighted enough to believe them. I don't think there is enough amnesiacs in the hands of all the angels in heaven to make that happen. Not this time. Oh, how the mighty will fall.

This is what happens when a republic turns to empire, and the servants of the people wish to become their masters. It has happened before, many times, and even within the memory of our own history. The Stamp Act passed by Parliament in order to subjugate the 13 Colonies was one such time. Following the Seven Years War, Parliament turned its attention to the long neglected English Colonies in North America. Claiming that the war was fought to protect the colonials, Parliament proceeded to pass the Stamp Act, a method of internal taxation on the colonies to "pay for the war."

Many colonists perceived that this was at best a half-truth. The war itself was a war of empire between France and England, only part of which was played out in the colonies, and that part to decide who would control the wilderness empire of North America. Further, these colonists understood that Parliament's interest in them was to confined to milking them dry for the purpose of using their productivity to shore up an aristocracy that lived off of incomes they did nothing to earn. In other words, British dandies would purchase their beaver hats adorned with 'macaroni' on the backs of colonists, indentured servants and slaves.

Over against this plan of Parliament was also the matter of the English Constitution. Not gathered in one place, it was comprised of a series of laws and precedents dating back to Magna Carta and before, which guaranteed Englishmen certain rights to protect their liberty and to keep them from becoming peasants and serfs, as most of the farmers on the European Continent were. Having been left alone far away in North America, the colonists were not subject to the gradual erosion of their liberties that their English brethren were, and they were jealous of their rights and freedom. Further, although they were subject to trade practices intended to keep their colonies free of real money and dependent on England, they did have Crown charters that guaranteed that their own representative assemblies had the right to determine internal taxation.

Enter the Stamp Act of 1765, the spark that began the conflagration that sundered an Empire and created a new nation in North America. Like the so-called "Healthcare Bill", the Stamp Act was far more than it seemed. It required that every legal paper, every book and newspaper, every contract, diploma, and church document be affixed with a stamp proving that the colonists had paid a tax on it. And the tax was to be paid in 'specie'--money in coin--in this case, pounds sterling, which was very rare in the colonies due to the restrictive trade practices mentioned above. This meant that Parliament in far-off England would not only destroy initiative and control commerce in the colonies, but it would also control every aspect of the lives of the colonists.

Many colonial leaders understood that they would become slaves on an endless treadmill of regulation and taxation designed to subjugate them utterly to the special interests within Parliament, and that they were to have no say in the matter, nor would they be allowed any way to protect their own interests. And some among them began to understand that if they acquiesced to the Stamp Act without a fight, they were be subject to heavier taxation and interference at the whim of Parliament, and that the Crown they looked to for protection from such tyranny would in fact betray them. Loyal to their constitution and to the Common Law, and proudly and fiercely free Englishmen, I can imagine them singing the popular Rule Britannia:

"Thee, haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame,

All their attempts to bend thee down

Will but arouse thy generous flame;

But work their woe, and thy renown.

Rule Britannia! Rule the waves!

Britons shall never be slaves!"

And so threatened with slavery by their own government, the colonists aroused their "generous flame" in the name of English Liberty, and in the year 1765 began what became the American Revolution. From Massachussetts to Rhode Island to the Carolinas, they wrote pamplets, letters, declarations and resolves against the incipient tyranny. But none more famous than the Virginia Resolves and the oratory of the author, the fiery Patrick Henry:

"History is rife with instances of ambitious, grasping tyranny! Like many of you, I, too have read that in the past the tyrants Tarquin and Ceasar each had his Brutus, Cataline had his Cicero and Cato, and closer to our time, Charles had his Cromwell. George the Third may . . ."

(Here the speech in the House of Burgesses was interrupted by cries of "Treason! Treason!")

". . . may George the Third profit by their example! If this be treason, then make the most of it!"

From the north to the south in the English colonies of North America, chapters of the Sons of Liberty were formed, tax collectors were ridden out of town on rails and hung in effigy, and within two years not one stamp franchise remained operating in the colonies. Parliament was forced to repeal the Stamp Act, however, in further attempts to subjugate the colonies, it then passed the hated Townshend Acts that created more of a firestorm and catalyzed the Boston Massacre. Parliament ended up repealing most of those acts as well, but the Tea Act remained in place. The Boston Tea Party protest resulted in the most tyrannous Intolerable Acts which led directly to Lexington, Concord and ultimately to the Declaration of Independence.

As the Stamp Act did in the name of empire, so in the name of healthcare the bill before Congress seeks to do today. In fact the "Healthcare Bill" is worse, for not one person knows all that is in it, and the majority leadership has promised to "improve" the bill further after it passes--meaning that what is voted upon--if indeed it is voted upon--will contain further depredations on our liberty that no one now knows. Just as Parliament made its own rules, and the tore the fabric of the British Constitution, so today Congress in "far off Washington City*", does with this calummous and venal idea of "deeming" legislation to be passed.

*The world is smaller today with the speed of modern travel, but the differences between the inside-the-beltway bureaucracy and the lives of most Americans is more sharply drawn than ever, as the political class attempts to consolidate power and become an aristocracy.

Further, our wanna-be masters claim to be doing this out of pity for the poor and sick among us--they of the same "Janus face" that Patrick Henry warned of--shedding crocodile tears for us out of one side of their faces, while smirking at their own lies out of the other. Do not be fooled by their Janus tears and do not forget their Janus lies.

This Republic sits on a powder keg whose power Nancy Pelosi and her minions know nothing of. It is the righteous power of those who remember that this nation was conceived upon the natural rights of men, and brought forth to protect their liberty. That glorious sense of freedom bequeathed to us by the founders still stirs in our blood today, and we shall never, never be slaves.

Now is the time for the winter soldier and patriots of the storm to gather their courage and sharpen their wits in order to bring America through this great gate in history and return to our children their heritage of Liberty.

Our oath and our loyalty, like that of our ancestor in spirit, Patrick Henry, is to our Liberty and to our Constitution. Therefore we commit no treason in opposing with every muscle and fiber of our being the attempts of venal politicians to turn us into slaves.

The First of Nisan

Tonight when the sun set a new Hebrew day began,
and because it is Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, a new month began as well.

It is the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the month in which we celebrate Zeman Cheruteynu--the Season of Our Freedom. (The "ch" sounds the German "ch" in Bach).

This means that Passover begins two weeks from tonight and all the time I had thought I had for spring cleaning is dwindling down to nothing. It is time for the big push.

And like last year, I am experiencing some Pesach Denial. This year, we will be having a small and intimate Seder so it will be different than Seders of the past. This is probably a good thing--we have had many transitions in the past year in our lives--some personal, some familial, and some in our larger lives. We will have a few guests, but our family and the Professional Revolutionary will be the only Jews.

I still have my office to clean, and then the living room, pantry and the big job--turning the kitchen over for Pesach. And the Rasta-Jew must be nagged into cleaning his room and bathroom, and the Professional Revolutionary must clean up his room. And the Chametz (leavened stuff) and fermented stuff must be removed. This will be hard on the Professional Revolutionary especially, so I have decided to break him into it gently, by having him watch Manishchewitzville:



"I don't know the reason the Passover Season comes as a surprise every year.
One day it's Purim, the groggers are whirling, and it seems a week later Passover's here."

This song always puts a smile on my face.
It gets me in the mood for Pesach.

Although not overly schmaltzy, it brings up good memories--the Chem Geek Princess at two, falling asleep at the Seder table, her cheek pillowed in the "smashed" potatoes; the CGP at four, standing on a chair at the Hillel second night Seder in pink sailor-trimmed dress, singing the four questions in perfect Hebrew. The Rasta-Jew (aka the Boychick) at 15 months, putting his hand on my lap and beginning to sing "David Melech Yisrael" (David, King of Israel), because he wanted to join in on the four questions but didn't know the Hebrew; the same kid at 15 years singing the Reggae version of the four questions. In English and Hebrew.

And the last verse ends with: "But somehow the Seder always seems to turn out fine."
Hey, even after 24 years of throwing my own Seders, that's reassuring.

And this year, we added When Do We Eat? (the movie). Our Seder could never be this dysfunctional. Could it?




Passover: It's what Jews do.