Constitution: Just a Piece of Paper?

by Fred Marshall Jr.
August 20, 2008

There are men who beat their wives who are never reported (it's a safe bet more such men are in law enforcement than in any other single profession). There are men whose lives are ruined by wives who falsely accuse them of physical abuse. Laws protect neither the battered wife nor the innocent husband or boyfriend. Laws just appear on pages of books sitting on bookshelves. They protect nobody and they punish nobody, in much the same way that guns harm nobody, of and by themselves. What matters is which laws are, and are not, enforced and upon whom they are, and are not, enforced.

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" (
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml)

Similarly, the Constitution protects no one nor does it protect anyone's rights. It's a piece of paper with words, phrases and sentences printed on it, words, sentences and phrases which have no power of enforcement in and of themselves. The provisions of the document are intended to protect the people against abusive governments, but then it's those abusive governments upon whom the people rely for the enforcement of Constitutional provisions and, as everyone knows, governments are reluctant to even acknowledge their own wrongdoing, let alone visit punishments upon their own agencies and employees.

Some will suggest, correctly, that theoretically the people haven't lost any Constitutional rights, that all those rights are intact and are as valid as ever. Such people know that Congress lacks the lawful authority to alter, amend, or ignore the Constitution by any means other than those provided for in the Constitution itself. That is to say, amendments must be effected by the people, as represented by no fewer than three-quarters of the states (Article V), and cannot, therefore, be amended by Congressional passage of such laws as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, for example.

But Congress passes laws all the time which violate the Constitution and it does it purposely, with every intention of enforcing the unlawful laws using government POWER, not lawful authority. The government has the big guns and tanks, and it can HURT people. Lacking lawful authority bothers them not one whit.

There are countless such unlawful laws on the books that are enforced by, guess who, the very government which violated the Constitution when it passed the laws. The earliest one which comes immediately to mind is "The Federal Reserve Act" of 1913 (in which the Congress unlawfully surrendered its Constitutionally-mandated DUTY, to coin and value money, to a criminal cabal of despotic international bankers). To be Constitutional (and lawful), that would have had to be done via Constitutional amendment but it wasn't. Yet, for 95 years, the government has "endorsed" the operations of "The Fed" while the Fed's privately-owned collection arm (IRS) has bilked and extorted the American people out of tens of TRILLIONS of dollars in the greatest financial fraud in the history of the world, and THE PEOPLE HAVE DONE NOTHING. Even the ones who have "squawked" haven't squawked loudly enough nor attracted many to join them. Half a million KNOW, 300 million don't know and most don't even WANT to know because they don't CARE.

Whether the battered wife says "Please don't hit me, Honey," to her sniveling coward husband or "There are laws which say you can't beat me, and I'll call the police if you hit me again," neither is likely to avert the impending black eye he thinks she has coming to her, and thinks he's the one ordained to give it to her (if he's in law enforcement, it's more likely than not that even if she calls and reports his physical attack, the district attorney will opt not to prosecute). If she shoots him she'll be charged and tried for murder and a dum bassed jury will likely convict her. Acquittals in such cases are rare, mainly because there is usually no witness, and juries typically accept the lies, to which law enforcement officers and government employees testify with impunity, over the word of a "mere" citizen.

There are federal laws which declare that any law Congress passes which is repugnant to the Constitution is, on its face, a NULLITY. That clearly applies to the Federal Reserve Act, the U.S.A. Patriot Acts, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and thousands more, but when was the last time you saw one of them overturned?

The Second Amendment is clear and unambiguous in its declaration that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It doesn't state the people can only keep and bear certain arms in certain places under certain conditions, nor does it state that the arms must be holstered or in plain view or unloaded or have trigger locks. It doesn't state that certain arms can only be used for hunting or target shooting or self defense, no, it states unequivocally that the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED….PERIOD! That means by ANYBODY or ANY authority.

The Fourth Amendment purports to guarantee the people the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, and it clearly states that this right SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED. It further requires that warrants shall not be issued but upon sworn affidavit attesting to probable cause and specifically describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Which reader believes (s)he is afforded any protection or privacy under the authority of the Fourth Amendment? Which one is comfortable in his/her home, confident that local, state or federal government agents are somehow prevented, by a piece of paper, from kicking in their doors at will?

Most readers sign tax returns, under penalties of perjury, swearing that all the information provided thereon is true and correct. If the IRS/DOJ charges and prosecutes you for any so-called tax violation, most of the evidence that will be used to try/convict you will come from the information YOU FURNISHED on that tax return. Is that not compelled self-incrimination? Of course it is. Does the Fifth Amendment give you the right to refuse to sign a tax return under penalties of perjury (testify against yourself)? Of course it does. But I wouldn't advise trying it any time soon.

The First Amendment "guarantees" the people freedom of speech, and that is intended to protect what you say and what you write against government restriction or censorship. Try writing a factual and well-documented book entitled "The Federal Mafia" and see how quickly it gets taken out of circulation, how quickly you get ordered not to sell or otherwise distribute it, and how quickly you land in jail. There's an 80-year-old man named Irwin Schiff who will die in jail for precisely THAT "crime," though everything he did was (1) legal and (2) "protected" by the Constitution.

Google "Congressman George Hansen" and see what happened to a member of Congress who tried to alert the people, on the floor of the House of Representatives and, by writing a book about the income tax "To Harass Our People." Then Google "Congressman James Traficant" and see how the government frames people who speak out publicly against government corruption. You'll have to look a bit closer to find what really happened to Chandra Levy and why. Did Mary Jo Kopechne know too much? The Constitution didn't protect any of these people from the government that was determined to "get" them.

The Sixth Amendment prescribes the people's rights, when charged with a crime, to a speedy and public trial by jury, to have subpoena powers to obtain witnesses and evidence in his favor, and to have the assistance of legal counsel. Yet jury-rigging and jury-tampering is standard operating procedure for the government in many jurisdictions.

When established, the jury was intended to be the people's final protection against abusive government. But with systematic indoctrination over time, jury pools across the nation have been brainwashed to mistakenly believe that their responsibilities are (1) to do as the judge instructs them and (2) to be a de facto rubber stamp for the prosecution.

Theoretically, citizens have three votes: one at the ballot box in general election, one when serving on grand juries, and one when serving on trial juries. Despite the awesome lawful power of grand juries, they are skillfully manipulated by prosecutors to the point that they will indict a "ham sandwich" when asked to do so by the prosecution. Their lawful duty to protect the public is completely unknown to 99.9% of them. The same is true with trial juries. The courts (the prosecutors and the judges) work diligently to eliminate anyone from jury duty who might have any knowledge that would help them reach a JUST verdict. They want completely uninformed jury members they can easily manipulate to do their bidding.
I have personally sat through half a dozen federal trials as a spectator. In none of the cases have I seen a defendant who has violated any lawful statute or regulation, yet in none of the cases have I seen an acquittal. In none of the cases have I seen a defendant convicted BASED UPON THE LAW. In all of the cases I have seen convictions achieved by misleading and manipulating the juries. Many people sit in jail because the government has the POWER to put them there, the law be damned.

Among the major moving parts in the massive propaganda machine that runs this country are the movies and television programming. For more than 60 years they have methodically brainwashed viewers to believe what the men behind the curtain want them to believe. Despite the care exercised in monitoring the subtle and subliminal messages sent by movies and television programs, occasionally the truth slips through.

One prime example can be found in the movie "The Verdict," in which Paul Newman plays an often drunken lawyer, who is representing the sibling of a young woman, plunged into a coma by medical malpractice. When he addresses the jury in his closing arguments, he says "Today, YOU are the LAW." That's true in all jury trials. It's just that juries know neither their duties nor their powers. They [think they] "know" what they have been programmed to believe.

Let me give just one example of the propaganda POWER of the government. Throughout my 20-year military career, security questionnaires asked "are you now, or have you ever been, a member of any of the following [subversive] organizations?" The list was long, three or four full-page columns in small print, perhaps a hundred or more of them. Among them was included, for most of my career, "The John Birch Society." In the early 1980's, long after I had returned to civilian life, I read somewhere that the JBS had sued the government to remove their organization from the "subversive" list and had won. I decided to look into the JBS and see what it was all about and why it had been labeled (without cause) as subversive in the first place, and why the government hadn't been able to prove it was subversive. Without the Internet at my fingertips back then, I journeyed to two libraries and searched. My limited findings shocked my then brainwashed mind, and I learned considerably more once the Internet became available to me.

The JBS was founded in 1958 by a group headed by a man named Robert Welch. They took the name of [Captain] John Birch, a heroic missionary who became a courageous soldier and was brutally murdered in 1945 by Chinese Communists. Since its inception, the Society has always strived to raise Americans' awareness level regarding the Constitution and the remarkable system of government our founders created for us. It also works to inform Americans about the behind-the-scenes forces which are dedicated to destroying that system.

The John Birch Society is not a political entity that endorses candidates for public office, but it does seek to inform the electorate as to the attributes and baggage of candidates, in the belief that an educated populace can keep governments in check and operating within the limitations posed by the Constitution. The motto, "Less government, more responsibility, and - - with God's help - - a better world" sums up the Society's opposition to ever-growing abusive government. Since it successfully exposes corruption and fraud in government, it's easy to see why dishonest governments would label it as "subversive." The society has never been subversive to the nation or to the Constitution or to the public, but it definitely is subversive to those forces determined to destroy the nation and its people's rights.

Qualifying for membership requires that male and female applicants of all races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds be of good character and respect noble ideals. I encourage interested people to investigate the JBS. It's a most honorable and patriotic organization.

You won't find anything in print today that is more accurate, more thoroughly researched or better resourced than the articles published in the Society's official magazine, "The New American." In fact, it was the New American which scoured an avalanche of government documents declassified in 1995 and found incontrovertible proof that every single person Senator Eugene McCarthy accused of being a Communist was, in fact, a Communist. But the people he exposed were more powerful than he was and they managed to discredit and virtually destroy him, a relatively honest man who was attempting to root out evil in the government way back then.

Very little is as it seems. We have a Constitution. You can be certain it is an historical document. It exists. It attracts lip service in some quarters. It is hailed, almost worshipped, in others. The governments charged with enforcing its provisions are among the biggest violators and usurpers. But I don't see much evidence that it has any significant relevance in today's world. The only force which could revive its relevance is THE PEOPLE, and I don't see any evidence that many of them give a rat sass.

It's difficult to honestly conclude anything other than "It's just a piece of paper." More eloquently put, "It's an historical relic."
Copyright August 2008
Fred Marshall Jr.
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