Americans, the Common Law, and Freedom – What you need to know.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —“

When you read the preamble to the Declaration of Independence remember what the world looked like to the men who wrote it. Then look at our world through their eyes; understanding their world and the institutions they used routinely brings understanding of what has gone so wrong with our world today.

Their world was the same and different. The agreement to go to war came after a long process of discourse over the issues, not by leaders, but by ordinary people. The Committees of Correspondence drove a dialogue on why the people should govern themselves, enacting formally what they had been doing for two centuries. They were a people who expected to cooperate, looking across into each other’s eyes, never up to anyone in government.

Over that time they had built a vibrant and robust society that was stretching out in all directions. The people governed themselves, using of a system of organizing tools, proven over time. Those tools were town government operating with transparency, ensuring that real control remained directly in the hands of the people. For justice, they used the Common Law, brought with them from England.

Control of the functions of government through the town ensured that government would never eat up the seed corn. Direct scrutiny by the people on what was spent, the authority always with them to approve or deny, kept government small and honest. Delving back in time you see these people assumed that no one went into government to make money or secure their retirement because the pay was terrible and there were no benefits. Those serving in government were assumed to have enough money to be able to donate their time. That model still persists in some parts of New England. The same principles were in use for the justice system through the Common Law Courts. Judges performed a service to the community, drawing from their own time to do so.

In use by the people for centuries, the common law was not something apart from the people but like the air they breathed. School children saw it operating and were prepared to use it themselves when they became adults. Going to court was serious, a process treated with respect, but instead of dividing them they entered into that process knowing that, ultimately, there would be justice. Contrast that to how the system of courts looks to us today.

The Common Law is a system for justice that is handled directly by the people. That is the system our Founders assumed would continue; it was one of those tools, used sparingly, that allowed a free people to govern themselves directly. Town government, with its absolute transparency and resulting low costs, along with the Common Law, were the foundation for freedom that the Founders assumed would continue.

Elections handled directly by the people; the votes totaled openly and transparently.

Spending by government overseen directly by the people.

Common law courts that possessed the right to judge both the facts and the law.

The system worked. It remains the system intended by our Founders. It can still work today.

How do we become, again, a people who govern themselves? That we can do so is inherent in our mission statement. The Declaration of Independence says,

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The first Amendment of the Bill of Rights owes its existence to a common law case heard in New York in 1735. In 1735 the Royal Governor of New York attempted to suborn the right of jury to decide fact and law. It had begun with the publication of the New-York Weekly Journal in 1633 with Zenger as the editor. The paper began because Crosby, the Royal Governor, was corrupt and the people needed the truth. Zenger was arrested and incarcerated for telling the truth on November 17, 1734. The bail set made his release impossible.

The Zenger Case was heard on August 4^th of that year saw a jury of twelve men render the verdict of not guilty, thus overthrowing the law and setting a course that lead to the principle that the truth is its own defense. It was this case that remained in the minds of our Founders when they wrote the Bill of Rights, addendum to the Constitution, which was intended to limit government, never us.

The verdict of Not Guilty affirmed the right of anyone to break a law that violated the conscience of the community and the right of an individual to speak the truth.

The Zenger Case is with you any time you serve on a jury.

The Common Law is the muscle behind our rights.

Many today think of the Common Law as antiquated and impractical; nothing could be further from the truth. The disused understanding of these tools are waiting for us to pick up. They are easy to use and bring with them amazing benefits, also forgotten, that created the American people as different from any nation on the face of the Earth.

When you are empaneled as a juror on a Common Law Court you already understand that this is a grave responsibility. You take up the charge to become, with those others serving, the conscience of your community. You leave behind you any prejudices. Those who serve understand they must see the matter at hand dispassionately, demand the facts, scrutinize the evidence, see beyond evasion to the root of the issues. Then, the juror must reflect on each other point, listening as if the life of their community depended on it.

America itself owes its existence, in part, to another case where the jury refused to violate the conscience of the community and the right of the individual. That jury heard its case in England in 1670. King Charles II demanded the prosecution of William Penn for the crime of preaching his Quaker faith. The jury foreman, Edward Bushel, along with the rest of the jury, found the law unjust, in violation of the people’s right to worship. The case was heard at the Old-Bailey from the 1^st to the and 5^th of Sept.

Afterwards, the jury was incarcerated for returning a verdict that outraged the judge. He directed that the jury reconsider their verdict. They retired and returned with the same verdict, Not Guilty. The judge then confined the jury in Newgate Prison to remain without food or water until the desired verdict was rendered. They continued to hold that William Penn was not guilty. Eventually they were fined and released.

William Penn, then 26 immigrated to Pennsylvania. The lesson of the right of the jury to decide is the birth right of all Americans and the midwife of our freedom.

The Common Law and its principles remain in use, though those now in power try to disguise their existence. A pivotal example of the same kind of courage shown in the Zenger and Penn cases took place in the township of Credit River, Minnesota on 12^th December 1968. The issue was the fraud being perpetrated by banks across the world. It is known as the Credit River Case.

Jerome Daly faced eviction from his home. Daly had sued the bank, his house in foreclosure; while reviewing the papers and practices he had noticed that the mortgage was issued with no legal consideration. The verdict rendered hinged on the admission by the president of the First National Bank of Montgomary that there was no legal consideration with the loan written for Jerome Daly’s mortgage. The bank president testified, ‘this was standard banking practice exercised by their bank in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, another private bank, further that he knew of no United States Statute or law that gave the plaintiff the authority to do this.”

Daly kept his home. Two weeks later the judge in the case, Mahoney, was murdered. No one ever said that freedom and justice would come without costs.

Courts that follow the common law accept the tenet that the jury decides on all issues, both fact and law; they can demand more information. Nothing is hidden from them. The judge is only there to be called on by the jury. They must understand that the rights of individuals trump statute, and, most importantly, they are acting as the incarnation of the conscience of the community.

Arguably, the most important check and balance to power in government is the power of the informed jury to decide on the issues of both of law and fact. Today, we as Americans face the need to restore to use the tools that connect us to our own power, granted not by government, but by God.

Start with your local county, establish your own Heritage Association on the common law and the Constitution.

Let your local law enforcement know what their obligations are under the Constitution.

Celebrate Jury Rights Day, September 5^th . Get to know the Fully Informed Jury Association.

A free people will govern themselves; a people who will be free do it themselves.

A Great and Gathering Storm

The following statement is written by bestselling author Congressman Paul about the pending financial disaster. His latest book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for months without a peep from the mainstream media. Imagine how popular the book would be if the man got some press! I have the book; it’s blessedly concise (read: short), and it’s good.

From the Campaign for Liberty, SOMETHING BIG IS GOING ON, Dr. Paul lays it all out for us. We have a choice facing us during the coming storm:

1. Look to the governments and bank controllers of the world to “save” us (ahem: Hurricane Katrina anyone? How about Abu Grahib? Wireless wiretapping? The Domestic Terrist Thought Crimes Act? REALLY?)

OR

2. Put our OWN thinking caps on instead. Maybe centralized government and banking control wasn’t such a good idea after all.

I ask you THIS:

Why in GOD’S GREEN EARTH would we ask the government and the banking industry to “fix” a disaster that IT CAUSED ITSELF, especially when one may argue, compellingly, that the destruction was INTENTIONAL?

I include the Democratic Party in my line of questioning because it has utterly, purposefully, sold us out. It is simply the team wearing the blue shirts so that we can tell the players apart on the field. The same banking interests own both teams, and besides one or two “pet” causes and a lot of trigger-worded blather the two parties are indistinguishable. Unfortunately for the country we have but TWO unimpeachable members of Congress today: Dennis Kucinich, and Dr. Ron Paul. Barack Obama may be a perfectly nice guy, but he’s not the Obamessiah. He was hand-picked by a different faction of those same Forces selling us down the river. “Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.” The CLINTON MACHINE has been made a part of his campaign. HE HAS BEEN ASSIMILATED BY THE BORG.

I’m with Dr. Paul: I believe it’s time for us to join hands with our neighbors, take back our country using all means at our disposal, and restore the Constitution. In fact it’s our OBLIGATION as American citizens to overthrow oppressive governments. To allow this international Shadow Government to swoop in and impose it’s ready made “solution” to their self-caused disaster would be the height of American COWARDICE.

I am throwing down the gauntlet, NOW:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

(PS: Any highlights below are my own)

A Letter from Dr. Ron Paul

I have, for the past 35 years, expressed my grave concern for the future of America. The course we have taken over the past century has threatened our liberties, security and prosperity. In spite of these long-held concerns, I have days—growing more frequent all the time—when I’m convinced the time is now upon us that some Big Events are about to occur. These fast-approaching events will not go unnoticed. They will affect all of us. They will not be limited to just some areas of our country. The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed.

Though the world has long suffered from the senselessness of wars that should have been avoided, my greatest fear is that the course on which we find ourselves will bring even greater conflict and economic suffering to the innocent people of the world—unless we quickly change our ways.

America, with her traditions of free markets and property rights, led the way toward great wealth and progress throughout the world as well as at home. Since we have lost our confidence in the principles of liberty, self reliance, hard work and frugality, and instead took on empire building, financed through inflation and debt, all this has changed. This is indeed frightening and an historic event.

The problem we face is not new in history. Authoritarianism has been around a long time. For centuries, inflation and debt have been used by tyrants to hold power, promote aggression, and provide “bread and circuses” for the people. The notion that a country can afford “guns and butter” with no significant penalty existed even before the 1960s when it became a popular slogan. It was then, though, we were told the Vietnam War and a massive expansion of the welfare state were not problems. The seventies proved that assumption wrong.

Today things are different from even ancient times or the 1970s. There is something to the argument that we are now a global economy. The world has more people and is more integrated due to modern technology, communications, and travel. If modern technology had been used to promote the ideas of liberty, free markets, sound money and trade, it would have ushered in a new golden age—a globalism we could accept.

Instead, the wealth and freedom we now enjoy are shrinking and rest upon a fragile philosophic infrastructure. It is not unlike the levies and bridges in our own country that our system of war and welfare has caused us to ignore.

I’m fearful that my concerns have been legitimate and may even be worse than I first thought. They are now at our doorstep. Time is short for making a course correction before this grand experiment in liberty goes into deep hibernation.

There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it’s been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers.

Being an unchallenged sole superpower was never accepted by us with a sense of humility and respect. Our arrogance and aggressiveness have been used to promote a world empire backed by the most powerful army of history. This type of globalist intervention creates problems for all citizens of the world and fails to contribute to the well-being of the world’s populations. Just think how our personal liberties have been trashed here at home in the last decade.

The financial crisis, still in its early stages, is apparent to everyone: gasoline prices over $4 a gallon; skyrocketing education and medical-care costs; the collapse of the housing bubble; the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble; stockmarkets plunging; unemployment rising;, massive underemployment; excessive government debt; and unmanageable personal debt. Little doubt exists as to whether we’ll get stagflation. The question that will soon be asked is: When will the stagflation become an inflationary depression?

There are various reasons that the world economy has been globalized and the problems we face are worldwide. We cannot understand what we’re facing without understanding fiat money and the long-developing dollar bubble.

There were several stages. From the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to 1933, the Central Bank established itself as the official dollar manager. By 1933, Americans could no longer own gold, thus removing restraint on the Federal Reserve to inflate for war and welfare.

By 1945, further restraints were removed by creating the Bretton-Woods Monetary System making the dollar the reserve currency of the world. This system lasted up until 1971. During the period between 1945 and 1971, some restraints on the Fed remained in place. Foreigners, but not Americans, could convert dollars to gold at $35 an ounce. Due to the excessive dollars being created, that system came to an end in 1971.

It’s the post Bretton-Woods system that was responsible for globalizing inflation and markets and for generating a gigantic worldwide dollar bubble. That bubble is now bursting, and we’re seeing what it’s like to suffer the consequences of the many previous economic errors.

Ironically in these past 35 years, we have benefited from this very flawed system. Because the world accepted dollars as if they were gold, we only had to counterfeit more dollars, spend them overseas (indirectly encouraging our jobs to go overseas as well) and enjoy unearned prosperity. Those who took our dollars and gave us goods and services were only too anxious to loan those dollars back to us. This allowed us to export our inflation and delay the consequences we now are starting to see.

But it was never destined to last, and now we have to pay the piper. Our huge foreign debt must be paid or liquidated. Our entitlements are coming due just as the world has become more reluctant to hold dollars. The consequence of that decision is price inflation in this country—and that’s what we are witnessing today. Already price inflation overseas is even higher than here at home as a consequence of foreign central bank’s willingness to monetize our debt.

Printing dollars over long periods of time may not immediately push prices up–yet in time it always does. Now we’re seeing catch-up for past inflating of the monetary supply. As bad as it is today with $4 a gallon gasoline, this is just the beginning. It’s a gross distraction to hound away at “drill, drill, drill” as a solution to the dollar crisis and high gasoline prices. Its okay to let the market increase supplies and drill, but that issue is a gross distraction from the sins of deficits and Federal Reserve monetary shenanigans.

This bubble is different and bigger for another reason. The central banks of the world secretly collude to centrally plan the world economy. I’m convinced that agreements among central banks to “monetize” U.S. debt these past 15 years have existed, although secretly and out of the reach of any oversight of anyone—especially the U.S. Congress that doesn’t care, or just flat doesn’t understand. As this “gift” to us comes to an end, our problems worsen. The central banks and the various governments are very powerful, but eventually the markets overwhelm when the people who get stuck holding the bag (of bad dollars) catch on and spend the dollars into the economy with emotional zeal, thus igniting inflationary fever.

This time—since there are so many dollars and so many countries involved—the Fed has been able to “paper” over every approaching crisis for the past 15 years, especially with Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, which has allowed the bubble to become history’s greatest.

The mistakes made with excessive credit at artificially low rates are huge, and the market is demanding a correction. This involves excessive debt, misdirected investments, over-investments, and all the other problems caused by the government when spending the money they should never have had. Foreign militarism, welfare handouts and $80 trillion entitlement promises are all coming to an end. We don’t have the money or the wealth-creating capacity to catch up and care for all the needs that now exist because we rejected the market economy, sound money, self reliance and the principles of liberty.

Since the correction of all this misallocation of resources is necessary and must come, one can look for some good that may come as this “Big Even” unfolds.

There are two choices that people can make. The one choice that is unavailable to us is to limp along with the status quo and prop up the system with more debt, inflation and lies. That won’t happen.

One of the two choices, and the one chosen so often by government in the past is that of rejecting the principles of liberty and resorting to even bigger and more authoritarian government. Some argue that giving dictatorial powers to the President, just as we have allowed him to run the American empire, is what we should do. That’s the great danger, and in this post-911 atmosphere, too many Americans are seeking safety over freedom. We have already lost too many of our personal liberties already. Real fear of economic collapse could prompt central planners to act to such a degree that the New Deal of the 30’s might look like Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

The more the government is allowed to do in taking over and running the economy, the deeper the depression gets and the longer it lasts. That was the story of the 30ss and the early 40s, and the same mistakes are likely to be made again if we do not wake up.

But the good news is that it need not be so bad if we do the right thing. I saw “Something Big” happening in the past 18 months on the campaign trail. I was encouraged that we are capable of waking up and doing the right thing. I have literally met thousands of high school and college kids who are quite willing to accept the challenge and responsibility of a free society and reject the cradle-to-grave welfare that is promised them by so many do-good politicians.

If more hear the message of liberty, more will join in this effort. The failure of our foreign policy, welfare system, and monetary policies and virtually all government solutions are so readily apparent, it doesn’t take that much convincing. But the positive message of how freedom works and why it’s possible is what is urgently needed.

One of the best parts of accepting self reliance in a free society is that true personal satisfaction with one’s own life can be achieved. This doesn’t happen when the government assumes the role of guardian, parent or provider, because it eliminates a sense of pride. But the real problem is the government can’t provide the safety and economic security that it claims. The so-called good that government claims it can deliver is always achieved at the expense of someone else’s freedom. It’s a failed system and the young people know it.

Restoring a free society doesn’t eliminate the need to get our house in order and to pay for the extravagant spending. But the pain would not be long-lasting if we did the right things, and best of all the empire would have to end for financial reasons. Our wars would stop, the attack on civil liberties would cease, and prosperity would return. The choices are clear: it shouldn’t be difficult, but the big event now unfolding gives us a great opportunity to reverse the tide and resume the truly great American Revolution started in 1776. Opportunity knocks in spite of the urgency and the dangers we face.

Let’s make “Something Big is Happening” be the discovery that freedom works and is popular and the big economic and political event we’re witnessing is a blessing in disguise.

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