AMERIKA, AMERIKA
By Claire Wolfe
Let me run by you a brief list of items that are "the law" in America today.
As you read, consider what all these have in common.
1. A national database of employed people.
2. 100 pages of new "health care crimes," for which the penalty is (among
other things) seizure of assets from both doctors and patients.
3. Confiscation of assets from any American who establishes foreign
citizenship.
4. The largest gun confiscation act in U.S. history - which is also an
unconstitutional ex post facto law and the first law ever to remove people's
constitutional rights for committing a misdemeanor.
5. A law banning guns in ill-defined school zones; random roadblocks may be
used for enforcement; gun-bearing residents could become federal criminals
just by stepping outside their doors or getting into vehicles.
6. Increased funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, an
agency infamous for its brutality, dishonesty, and ineptitude.
7. A law enabling the executive branch to declare various groups
"Terrorists" - without stating any reason and without the possibility of
appeal. Once a group has been so declared, its mailing and membership lists
must be turned over to the government.
8. A law authorizing secret trials with secret evidence for certain classes
of people.
9. A law requiring that all states begin issuing driver's licenses carrying
Social Security numbers and "security features" (such as magnetically coded
fingerprints and personal records) by October 1, 2000. By October 1, 2006,
"Neither the Social Security Administration or the Passport Office or any
other federal agency or any state or local government agency may accept for
any evidentiary purpose a State driver's license or identification document
in a form other than [one issued with a verified Social Security number and
'security features']."
10. And my personal favorite - a national database, now being constructed,
that will contain every exchange and observation that takes place in your
doctor's office. This includes records of your prescriptions, your
hemorrhoids and your mental illness. It also includes - by law - any
statements you make ("Doc, I'm worried my kid may be on drugs*Doc, I've been
so stressed out lately I feel about ready to go postal.") and any
observations your doctor makes about your mental or physical condition,
whether accurate or not, whether made with your knowledge or not. For the
time being, there will be zero (count 'em, zero) privacy safeguards on this
data. But don't worry, your government will protect you with some undefined
"privacy standards" in a few years.
All of the above items are the law of the land. Federal law.
What else do they have in common?
Well, when I ask this question to audiences, I usually get the answer,
"They're all unconstitutional."
True.
My favorite answer came from an eloquent college student who blurted, "They
all SUUUCK!" Also true.
But the saddest and most telling answer is: They were all the product of the
104th Congress. Every one of the horrors above was imposed upon you by the
Congress of the Republican Revolution - the Congress that pledged to "get
government off your back."
Burying Time Bombs
All of the above became law by being buried in larger bills. In many cases,
they are hidden sneak attacks upon individual liberties that were neither
debated on the floor of Congress nor reported in the media. For instance,
three of the most horrific items (the health care database, asset
confiscation for foreign residency and the 100 pages of health care crimes)
were hidden in the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996 (HR 3103).
You didn't hear about them at the time because the media was too busy
celebrating this moderate, compromise bill that "simply" assured that no
American would ever lose insurance due to a job change or a pre-existing
condition.
Your legislator may not have heard about them, either.
Because he or she didn't care enough to do so. The fact is, most legislators
don't even read the laws they inflict upon the public. They read the title
of the bill (which may be something like "The Save the Sweet Widdle Babies
from Gun violence by Drooling Drug fiends Act of 1984"). They read
summaries, which are often prepared by the very agencies or groups pushing
the bill. And they vote according to various deals or pressures.
It also sometimes happens that the most horrible provisions are sneaked into
bills during conference committee negotiations, after both House and Senate
have voted on their separate versions of the bills. The conference committee
process is supposed simply to reconcile differences between versions of a
bill. But power brokers use it for purposes of their own, adding what they
wish. Then members of the House and Senate vote on the final, unified
version of the bill, often in a great rush, and often without even having
the amended text available for review. I have even heard (though I cannot
verify) that stealth provisions were written into some bills after all the
voting has taken place. Someone with a hidden agenda simply edits them in to
suit his or her own purposes. So these time bombs become "law" without ever
having been voted on by anybody. And who's to know? If congress people don't
even read legislation before they vote on it, why would they bother reading
it afterward? Are power brokers capable of such chicanery? Do we even need
to ask? Is the computer system in which bills are stored vulnerable to
tampering by people within or outside of Congress?
We certainly should ask. Whether your legislators were ignorant of the
infamy they were perpetrating, or whether they knew, one thing is absolutely
certain: The Constitution, your legislator's oath to it, and your
inalienable rights (which precede the Constitution) never entered into
anyone's consideration. Ironically, you may recall that one of the early
pledges of Newt Gingrich and Company was to stop these stealth attacks. Very
early in the 104th Congress, the Republican leadership declared that,
henceforth, all bills would deal only with the subject matter named in the
title of the bill. When, at the beginning of the 104th, pro-gun Republicans
attempted to attach a repeal of the "assault weapons" ban to another bill,
House leaders dismissed their amendment as not being "germane." After that
self-righteous and successful attempt to prevent pro-freedom stealth
legislation, Congress people turned right around and got back to the dirty
old business of practicing all the anti-freedom stealth they were capable
of.
Stealth Attacks in Broad Daylight
Three other items on my list (ATF funding, gun confiscation and school
roadblocks) were also buried in a big bill - HR 3610, the budget
appropriation passed near the end of the second session of the 104th
Congress. No legislator can claim to have been unaware of these three
because they were brought to public attention by gun-rights groups and hotly
debated in both Congress and the media. Yet some 90 percent of all congress
people voted for them including many who claim to be ardent protectors of
the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Why?
Well, in the case of my wrapped-in-the-flag, allegedly pro-gun, Republican
Congressperson: "Bill Clinton made me do it!" Okay, I paraphrase. What she
actually said was more like, "It was part of a budget appropriations
package. The public got mad at us for shutting the government down in 1995.
If we hadn't voted for this budget bill, they might have elected a
Democratic legislature in 1996 - and you wouldn't want THAT, would you?" Oh
heavens, no, I'd much rather be enslaved by people who spell their name with
an R than people who spell their name with a D. Makes all the difference in
the world!
How Sneak Attacks are Justified
The Republicans are fond of claiming that Bill Clinton "forced" them to pass
certain legislation by threatening to veto anything they sent to the White
House that didn't meet his specs. In other cases (as in the
Kennedy-Kassebaum bill), they proudly proclaim their misdeeds in the name of
bipartisanship - while carefully forgetting to mention the true nature of
what they're doing. In still others, they trumpet their triumph over the
evil Democrats and claim the mantle of limited government while sticking it
to us and to the Constitution. The national database of workers was in the
welfare reform bill they "forced" Clinton to accept. The requirement for SS
numbers and ominous "security" devices on drivers licenses originated in
their very own Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996,
HR 2202. Another common trick, called to my attention by Redmon Barbry,
publisher of the electronic magazine Fratricide, is to hide duplicate or
near duplicate provisions in several bills. Then, when the Supreme Court
declares Section A of Law Z to be unconstitutional, its kissing cousin,
Section B of Law Y, remains to rule us.
Sometimes this particular form of trickery is done even more brazenly; when
the Supreme Court, in its Lopez decision, declared federal-level school zone
gun bans unconstitutional because Congress demonstrated no jurisdiction,
Congress brassily changed a few words. They claimed that school zones fell
under the heading of "interstate commerce." Then they sneaked the provision
into HR 3610, where it became "law" once again. When angry voters upbraid
congress people about some Big Brotherish horror they've inflicted upon the
country by stealth, they claim lack of knowledge, lack of time, party
pressure, public pressure, or they justify themselves by claiming that the
rest of the bill was "good."
The simple fact is that, regardless of what reasons legislators may claim,
the U.S. Congress has passed more Big Brother legislation in the past two
years - more laws to enable tracking, spying, and controlling - than any
Democratic congress ever passed. Redmon Barbry put it best: "We the people
have the right to expect our elected representatives to read, comprehend and
master the bills they vote on. If this means Congress passes only 50 bills
per session instead of 5,000, so be it. As far as I am concerned, whoever
subverts this process is committing treason." By whatever means the deed is
done, there is no acceptable excuse for voting against the Constitution,
voting for tyranny. And I would add to Redmon's comments: Those who do read
the bills, then knowingly vote to ravage our liberties, are doubly guilty.
But when do the treason trials begin?
Bills as Window Dressing for an Ugly Agenda
The truth is that these tiny, buried provisions are often the real intent of
the law, and that the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages that surround
them are sometimes nothing more than elaborate window dressing. These tiny
time bombs are placed there at the behest of federal police agencies or
other power groups whose agenda is not clearly visible to us. And their
impact is felt long after the outward intent of the bill has been forgotten.
Civil forfeiture - now one of the plagues of the nation - was first
introduced in the 1970s as one of those buried, almost unnoticed provisions
of a larger law. One wonders why on earth a "health care bill" carried a
provision to confiscate the assets of people who become frightened or
discouraged enough to leave the country. (In fact, the entire bill was an
amendment to the Internal Revenue Code. Go figure.) I think we all realize
by now that that database of employed people will still be around enabling
government to track our locations (and heaven knows what else about us, as
the database is enhanced and expanded) long after the touted benefits of
"welfare reform" have failed to materialize.
And most grimly of all, our drivers licenses will be our de facto national
ID card long after immigrants have ceased to want to come to this Land of
the Once Free.
Control Reigns
It matters not one whit whether the people controlling you call themselves
R's or D's, liberals or conservatives, socialists or even (I hate to admit
it) libertarians. It doesn't matter whether they vote for these horrors
because they're not paying attention or because they actually like such
things.
What matters is that the pace of totalitarianism is increasing. And it is
coming closer to our daily lives all the time. Once your state passes the
enabling legislation (under threat of losing "federal welfare dollars"), it
is YOUR name and Social Security number that will be entered in that
employee database the moment you go to work for a new employer. It is YOU
who will be unable to cash a check, board an airplane, get a passport or be
allowed any dealings with any government agency if you refuse to give your
SS number to the drivers license bureau. It is YOU who will be endangered by
driving "illegally" if you refuse to submit to Big Brother's procedures. It
is YOU whose psoriasis, manic depression or prostate troubles will soon be
the reading matter of any bureaucrat with a computer. It is YOU who could be
declared a member of a "foreign terrorist" organization just because you
bought a book or concert tickets from some group the government doesn't
like. It is YOU who could lose your home, bank account and reputation
because you made a mistake on a health insurance form. Finally, when you
become truly desperate for freedom, it is YOU whose assets will be seized if
you try to flee this increasingly insane country.
As Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged, "There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well,
when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many
things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without
breaking laws."
It's time to drop any pretense. We are no longer law-abiding citizens. We
have lost our law-abiding status. There are simply too many laws to abide.
And because of increasingly draconian penalties and electronic tracking
mechanisms, our "lawbreaking" places us and our families in greater jeopardy
every day.
Stopping Runaway Government
The question is: What are we going to do about it? Write a nice, polite
letter to your congressperson? Hey, if you think that'll help, I've got a
bridge you might be interested in buying. (And it won't be your "bridge to
the future," either.) Vote "better people" into office? Oh yeah, that's what
we thought we were doing in 1994. Work to fight one bad bill or another?
Okay. What will you do about the 10 or 20 or 100 equally horrible bills that
will be passed behind your back while you were fighting that little battle?
And let's say you defeat a nightmare bill this year. What are you going to
do when they sneak it back in, at the very last minute, in some "omnibus
legislation" next year? And what about the horrors you don't even learn
about until two or three years after they become law? Should you try
fighting these laws in the courts? Where will you find the resources? Where
do you find a judge who doesn't have a vested interest in bigger, more
powerful government? And again, for every one case decided in favor of
freedom, what do you do about the 10, 20 or 100 in which the courts decide
against the Bill of Rights?
Perhaps you'd consider trying to stop the onrush of these horrors with a
constitutional amendment - maybe one that bans "omnibus" bills, requires
that every law meet a constitutional test or requires all congress people to
sign statements that they've read and understood every aspect of every bill
on which they vote. Good luck! Good luck, first, on getting such an
amendment passed. Then good luck getting our Constitution-scorning "leaders"
to obey it.
It is true that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and part of that
vigilance has been, traditionally, keeping a watchful eye on laws and on
lawbreaking lawmakers. But given the current pace of law spewing and
unconstitutional regulation-writing, you could watch, plead and struggle
"within the system" 24 hours a day for your entire life and end up
infinitely less free than when you begin. Why throw your life away on a
futile effort?
Face it. If "working within the system" could halt tyranny, the tyrants
would outlaw it. Why do you think they encourage you to vote, to write
letters, to talk to them in public forums? It's to divert your energies. To
keep you tame. "The system" as it presently exists is nothing more than a
rat maze. You run around thinking you're getting somewhere. Your masters
occasionally reward you with a little pellet that encourages you to believe
you're accomplishing something. And in the meantime, you are as much their
property and their pawn as if you were a slave. In the effort of fighting
them on their terms and with their authorized and approved tools, you have
given your life's energy to them as surely as if you were toiling away in
their cotton fields, under the lash of their overseer. The only way we're
going to get off this road to Hell is if we jump off. If we, personally, as
individuals, refuse to cooperate with evil. How we do that is up to each of
us. I can't decide for you, nor you for me. (Unlike congress people, who
think they can decide for everybody.) But this totalitarian runaway truck is
never going to stop unless we stop it, in any way we can. Stopping it might
include any number of things: tax resistance; public civil disobedience;
wide-scale, silent non-cooperation; highly noisy non-cooperation; boycotts;
secession efforts; monkey wrenching; computer hacking; dirty tricks against
government agents; public shunning of employees of abusive government
agencies; alternative, self-sufficient communities that provide their own
medical care and utilities.
There are thousands of avenues to take, and this is something most of us
still need to give more thought to before we can build an effective
resistance. We will each choose the courses that are right for our own
circumstances, personalities, and beliefs. Whatever we do, though, we must
remember that we are all, already, outlaws. Not one of us can be certain of
going through a single day without violating some law or regulation we've
never even heard of. We are all guilty in the eyes of today's law. If
someone in power chooses to target us, we can all already be prosecuted for
something. And I'm sure you know that your claims of "good intentions" won't
protect you, as the similar claims of politicians protect them. Politicians
are above the law. YOU are under it. Crushed under it. When you look at it
that way, we have very little left to lose by breaking laws creatively and
purposefully.
Yes, some of us will suffer horrible consequences for our lawbreaking. It is
very risky to actively resist unbridled power. It is especially risky to go
public with resistance (unless hundreds of thousands publicly join us), and
it becomes riskier the closer we get to tyranny. For that reason, among
others, I would never recommend any particular course of action to anyone -
and I hope you'll think twice before taking "advice" from anybody about
things that could jeopardize your life or well-being. But if we don't resist
in the best ways we know how and if a good number of us don't resist loudly
and publicly - all of us will suffer the much worse consequences of living
under total oppression. And whatever courses of action we take, we must
remember that this legislative "revolution" against We the People will not
be stopped by politeness. It will not be stopped by requests. It will not be
stopped by "working within a system" governed by those who regard us as
nothing but cattle. It will not be stopped by pleading for justice from
those who will resort to any degree of trickery or violence to rule us.
It will not be stopped unless we are willing to risk our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honors to stop it. I think of the words of Winston Churchill:
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without
bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so
costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the
odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a
worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory,
because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Notes on the laws listed above:
1. (employee database) Welfare Reform Bill, HR 3734; became public law
104-193 on 8/22/96; see section 453A.
2. (health care crimes) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
of 1996, HR 3103; became public law 104-191 on 8/21/96.
3. (asset confiscation for citizenship change) Same law as #2; see sections
511-513.
4., 5., and 6. (anti-gun laws) Omnibus Appropriations Act, HR 3610; became
public law
104-132 on 9/30/96. 7. and 8. (terrorism & secret trials) Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996; S 735; became public law 104-132 on
4/24/96; see all of Title III, specifically sections 302 and 219; also see
all of Title IV, specifically sections 401, 501, 502, and 503.
9. (de facto national ID card) Began life in the Immigration Control and
Financial Responsibility Act of 1996, sections II, III, 8, 119, 127, and
133; was eventually folded into the Omnibus Appropriations Act, HR 3610
(which was itself formerly called the Defense Appropriations Act - but we
wouldn't want to confuse anyone here, would we?); became public law 104-208
on 9/30/96; see sections 656 and 657 among others.
10. (health care database) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act of 1996, HR 3103; became public law 104-191 on 8/21/96; see sections
262, 263 and 264, among others. The various provisions that make up the full
horror of this database are scattered throughout the bill and may take hours
to track down; this one is stealth legislation at its utmost sneakiest.
And one final, final note: Although I spent aggravating hours verifying the
specifics of these bills (a task I swear I will never waste my life on
again!), the original list of bills at the top of this article was not the
result of extensive research. It was simply what came off the top of my head
when I thought of Big Brotherish bills from the 104th Congress. For all I
know, Congress has passed 10 more times more of that sort of thing. In fact,
the worst "law" on the list -- #9, the de facto national ID card - just came
to my attention as I was writing this essay, thanks to the enormous efforts
of Jackie Junnti and Ed Lyon and others, who researched the law. Think of
it: Thanks to congressional stealth tactics, we had the long-dreaded
national ID card legislation for five months, without a whisper of
discussion, before freedom activists began to find out about it. Makes you
wonder what else might be lurking out there, doesn't it?
And on that cheery note - THE END.
Copyrighted by Claire Wolfe. Permission to reprint freely granted, provided
the article is reprinted in full and that any reprint is accompanied by this
copyright statement.
By Claire Wolfe
Let me run by you a brief list of items that are "the law" in America today.
As you read, consider what all these have in common.
1. A national database of employed people.
2. 100 pages of new "health care crimes," for which the penalty is (among
other things) seizure of assets from both doctors and patients.
3. Confiscation of assets from any American who establishes foreign
citizenship.
4. The largest gun confiscation act in U.S. history - which is also an
unconstitutional ex post facto law and the first law ever to remove people's
constitutional rights for committing a misdemeanor.
5. A law banning guns in ill-defined school zones; random roadblocks may be
used for enforcement; gun-bearing residents could become federal criminals
just by stepping outside their doors or getting into vehicles.
6. Increased funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, an
agency infamous for its brutality, dishonesty, and ineptitude.
7. A law enabling the executive branch to declare various groups
"Terrorists" - without stating any reason and without the possibility of
appeal. Once a group has been so declared, its mailing and membership lists
must be turned over to the government.
8. A law authorizing secret trials with secret evidence for certain classes
of people.
9. A law requiring that all states begin issuing driver's licenses carrying
Social Security numbers and "security features" (such as magnetically coded
fingerprints and personal records) by October 1, 2000. By October 1, 2006,
"Neither the Social Security Administration or the Passport Office or any
other federal agency or any state or local government agency may accept for
any evidentiary purpose a State driver's license or identification document
in a form other than [one issued with a verified Social Security number and
'security features']."
10. And my personal favorite - a national database, now being constructed,
that will contain every exchange and observation that takes place in your
doctor's office. This includes records of your prescriptions, your
hemorrhoids and your mental illness. It also includes - by law - any
statements you make ("Doc, I'm worried my kid may be on drugs*Doc, I've been
so stressed out lately I feel about ready to go postal.") and any
observations your doctor makes about your mental or physical condition,
whether accurate or not, whether made with your knowledge or not. For the
time being, there will be zero (count 'em, zero) privacy safeguards on this
data. But don't worry, your government will protect you with some undefined
"privacy standards" in a few years.
All of the above items are the law of the land. Federal law.
What else do they have in common?
Well, when I ask this question to audiences, I usually get the answer,
"They're all unconstitutional."
True.
My favorite answer came from an eloquent college student who blurted, "They
all SUUUCK!" Also true.
But the saddest and most telling answer is: They were all the product of the
104th Congress. Every one of the horrors above was imposed upon you by the
Congress of the Republican Revolution - the Congress that pledged to "get
government off your back."
Burying Time Bombs
All of the above became law by being buried in larger bills. In many cases,
they are hidden sneak attacks upon individual liberties that were neither
debated on the floor of Congress nor reported in the media. For instance,
three of the most horrific items (the health care database, asset
confiscation for foreign residency and the 100 pages of health care crimes)
were hidden in the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996 (HR 3103).
You didn't hear about them at the time because the media was too busy
celebrating this moderate, compromise bill that "simply" assured that no
American would ever lose insurance due to a job change or a pre-existing
condition.
Your legislator may not have heard about them, either.
Because he or she didn't care enough to do so. The fact is, most legislators
don't even read the laws they inflict upon the public. They read the title
of the bill (which may be something like "The Save the Sweet Widdle Babies
from Gun violence by Drooling Drug fiends Act of 1984"). They read
summaries, which are often prepared by the very agencies or groups pushing
the bill. And they vote according to various deals or pressures.
It also sometimes happens that the most horrible provisions are sneaked into
bills during conference committee negotiations, after both House and Senate
have voted on their separate versions of the bills. The conference committee
process is supposed simply to reconcile differences between versions of a
bill. But power brokers use it for purposes of their own, adding what they
wish. Then members of the House and Senate vote on the final, unified
version of the bill, often in a great rush, and often without even having
the amended text available for review. I have even heard (though I cannot
verify) that stealth provisions were written into some bills after all the
voting has taken place. Someone with a hidden agenda simply edits them in to
suit his or her own purposes. So these time bombs become "law" without ever
having been voted on by anybody. And who's to know? If congress people don't
even read legislation before they vote on it, why would they bother reading
it afterward? Are power brokers capable of such chicanery? Do we even need
to ask? Is the computer system in which bills are stored vulnerable to
tampering by people within or outside of Congress?
We certainly should ask. Whether your legislators were ignorant of the
infamy they were perpetrating, or whether they knew, one thing is absolutely
certain: The Constitution, your legislator's oath to it, and your
inalienable rights (which precede the Constitution) never entered into
anyone's consideration. Ironically, you may recall that one of the early
pledges of Newt Gingrich and Company was to stop these stealth attacks. Very
early in the 104th Congress, the Republican leadership declared that,
henceforth, all bills would deal only with the subject matter named in the
title of the bill. When, at the beginning of the 104th, pro-gun Republicans
attempted to attach a repeal of the "assault weapons" ban to another bill,
House leaders dismissed their amendment as not being "germane." After that
self-righteous and successful attempt to prevent pro-freedom stealth
legislation, Congress people turned right around and got back to the dirty
old business of practicing all the anti-freedom stealth they were capable
of.
Stealth Attacks in Broad Daylight
Three other items on my list (ATF funding, gun confiscation and school
roadblocks) were also buried in a big bill - HR 3610, the budget
appropriation passed near the end of the second session of the 104th
Congress. No legislator can claim to have been unaware of these three
because they were brought to public attention by gun-rights groups and hotly
debated in both Congress and the media. Yet some 90 percent of all congress
people voted for them including many who claim to be ardent protectors of
the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Why?
Well, in the case of my wrapped-in-the-flag, allegedly pro-gun, Republican
Congressperson: "Bill Clinton made me do it!" Okay, I paraphrase. What she
actually said was more like, "It was part of a budget appropriations
package. The public got mad at us for shutting the government down in 1995.
If we hadn't voted for this budget bill, they might have elected a
Democratic legislature in 1996 - and you wouldn't want THAT, would you?" Oh
heavens, no, I'd much rather be enslaved by people who spell their name with
an R than people who spell their name with a D. Makes all the difference in
the world!
How Sneak Attacks are Justified
The Republicans are fond of claiming that Bill Clinton "forced" them to pass
certain legislation by threatening to veto anything they sent to the White
House that didn't meet his specs. In other cases (as in the
Kennedy-Kassebaum bill), they proudly proclaim their misdeeds in the name of
bipartisanship - while carefully forgetting to mention the true nature of
what they're doing. In still others, they trumpet their triumph over the
evil Democrats and claim the mantle of limited government while sticking it
to us and to the Constitution. The national database of workers was in the
welfare reform bill they "forced" Clinton to accept. The requirement for SS
numbers and ominous "security" devices on drivers licenses originated in
their very own Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996,
HR 2202. Another common trick, called to my attention by Redmon Barbry,
publisher of the electronic magazine Fratricide, is to hide duplicate or
near duplicate provisions in several bills. Then, when the Supreme Court
declares Section A of Law Z to be unconstitutional, its kissing cousin,
Section B of Law Y, remains to rule us.
Sometimes this particular form of trickery is done even more brazenly; when
the Supreme Court, in its Lopez decision, declared federal-level school zone
gun bans unconstitutional because Congress demonstrated no jurisdiction,
Congress brassily changed a few words. They claimed that school zones fell
under the heading of "interstate commerce." Then they sneaked the provision
into HR 3610, where it became "law" once again. When angry voters upbraid
congress people about some Big Brotherish horror they've inflicted upon the
country by stealth, they claim lack of knowledge, lack of time, party
pressure, public pressure, or they justify themselves by claiming that the
rest of the bill was "good."
The simple fact is that, regardless of what reasons legislators may claim,
the U.S. Congress has passed more Big Brother legislation in the past two
years - more laws to enable tracking, spying, and controlling - than any
Democratic congress ever passed. Redmon Barbry put it best: "We the people
have the right to expect our elected representatives to read, comprehend and
master the bills they vote on. If this means Congress passes only 50 bills
per session instead of 5,000, so be it. As far as I am concerned, whoever
subverts this process is committing treason." By whatever means the deed is
done, there is no acceptable excuse for voting against the Constitution,
voting for tyranny. And I would add to Redmon's comments: Those who do read
the bills, then knowingly vote to ravage our liberties, are doubly guilty.
But when do the treason trials begin?
Bills as Window Dressing for an Ugly Agenda
The truth is that these tiny, buried provisions are often the real intent of
the law, and that the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages that surround
them are sometimes nothing more than elaborate window dressing. These tiny
time bombs are placed there at the behest of federal police agencies or
other power groups whose agenda is not clearly visible to us. And their
impact is felt long after the outward intent of the bill has been forgotten.
Civil forfeiture - now one of the plagues of the nation - was first
introduced in the 1970s as one of those buried, almost unnoticed provisions
of a larger law. One wonders why on earth a "health care bill" carried a
provision to confiscate the assets of people who become frightened or
discouraged enough to leave the country. (In fact, the entire bill was an
amendment to the Internal Revenue Code. Go figure.) I think we all realize
by now that that database of employed people will still be around enabling
government to track our locations (and heaven knows what else about us, as
the database is enhanced and expanded) long after the touted benefits of
"welfare reform" have failed to materialize.
And most grimly of all, our drivers licenses will be our de facto national
ID card long after immigrants have ceased to want to come to this Land of
the Once Free.
Control Reigns
It matters not one whit whether the people controlling you call themselves
R's or D's, liberals or conservatives, socialists or even (I hate to admit
it) libertarians. It doesn't matter whether they vote for these horrors
because they're not paying attention or because they actually like such
things.
What matters is that the pace of totalitarianism is increasing. And it is
coming closer to our daily lives all the time. Once your state passes the
enabling legislation (under threat of losing "federal welfare dollars"), it
is YOUR name and Social Security number that will be entered in that
employee database the moment you go to work for a new employer. It is YOU
who will be unable to cash a check, board an airplane, get a passport or be
allowed any dealings with any government agency if you refuse to give your
SS number to the drivers license bureau. It is YOU who will be endangered by
driving "illegally" if you refuse to submit to Big Brother's procedures. It
is YOU whose psoriasis, manic depression or prostate troubles will soon be
the reading matter of any bureaucrat with a computer. It is YOU who could be
declared a member of a "foreign terrorist" organization just because you
bought a book or concert tickets from some group the government doesn't
like. It is YOU who could lose your home, bank account and reputation
because you made a mistake on a health insurance form. Finally, when you
become truly desperate for freedom, it is YOU whose assets will be seized if
you try to flee this increasingly insane country.
As Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged, "There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well,
when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many
things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without
breaking laws."
It's time to drop any pretense. We are no longer law-abiding citizens. We
have lost our law-abiding status. There are simply too many laws to abide.
And because of increasingly draconian penalties and electronic tracking
mechanisms, our "lawbreaking" places us and our families in greater jeopardy
every day.
Stopping Runaway Government
The question is: What are we going to do about it? Write a nice, polite
letter to your congressperson? Hey, if you think that'll help, I've got a
bridge you might be interested in buying. (And it won't be your "bridge to
the future," either.) Vote "better people" into office? Oh yeah, that's what
we thought we were doing in 1994. Work to fight one bad bill or another?
Okay. What will you do about the 10 or 20 or 100 equally horrible bills that
will be passed behind your back while you were fighting that little battle?
And let's say you defeat a nightmare bill this year. What are you going to
do when they sneak it back in, at the very last minute, in some "omnibus
legislation" next year? And what about the horrors you don't even learn
about until two or three years after they become law? Should you try
fighting these laws in the courts? Where will you find the resources? Where
do you find a judge who doesn't have a vested interest in bigger, more
powerful government? And again, for every one case decided in favor of
freedom, what do you do about the 10, 20 or 100 in which the courts decide
against the Bill of Rights?
Perhaps you'd consider trying to stop the onrush of these horrors with a
constitutional amendment - maybe one that bans "omnibus" bills, requires
that every law meet a constitutional test or requires all congress people to
sign statements that they've read and understood every aspect of every bill
on which they vote. Good luck! Good luck, first, on getting such an
amendment passed. Then good luck getting our Constitution-scorning "leaders"
to obey it.
It is true that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and part of that
vigilance has been, traditionally, keeping a watchful eye on laws and on
lawbreaking lawmakers. But given the current pace of law spewing and
unconstitutional regulation-writing, you could watch, plead and struggle
"within the system" 24 hours a day for your entire life and end up
infinitely less free than when you begin. Why throw your life away on a
futile effort?
Face it. If "working within the system" could halt tyranny, the tyrants
would outlaw it. Why do you think they encourage you to vote, to write
letters, to talk to them in public forums? It's to divert your energies. To
keep you tame. "The system" as it presently exists is nothing more than a
rat maze. You run around thinking you're getting somewhere. Your masters
occasionally reward you with a little pellet that encourages you to believe
you're accomplishing something. And in the meantime, you are as much their
property and their pawn as if you were a slave. In the effort of fighting
them on their terms and with their authorized and approved tools, you have
given your life's energy to them as surely as if you were toiling away in
their cotton fields, under the lash of their overseer. The only way we're
going to get off this road to Hell is if we jump off. If we, personally, as
individuals, refuse to cooperate with evil. How we do that is up to each of
us. I can't decide for you, nor you for me. (Unlike congress people, who
think they can decide for everybody.) But this totalitarian runaway truck is
never going to stop unless we stop it, in any way we can. Stopping it might
include any number of things: tax resistance; public civil disobedience;
wide-scale, silent non-cooperation; highly noisy non-cooperation; boycotts;
secession efforts; monkey wrenching; computer hacking; dirty tricks against
government agents; public shunning of employees of abusive government
agencies; alternative, self-sufficient communities that provide their own
medical care and utilities.
There are thousands of avenues to take, and this is something most of us
still need to give more thought to before we can build an effective
resistance. We will each choose the courses that are right for our own
circumstances, personalities, and beliefs. Whatever we do, though, we must
remember that we are all, already, outlaws. Not one of us can be certain of
going through a single day without violating some law or regulation we've
never even heard of. We are all guilty in the eyes of today's law. If
someone in power chooses to target us, we can all already be prosecuted for
something. And I'm sure you know that your claims of "good intentions" won't
protect you, as the similar claims of politicians protect them. Politicians
are above the law. YOU are under it. Crushed under it. When you look at it
that way, we have very little left to lose by breaking laws creatively and
purposefully.
Yes, some of us will suffer horrible consequences for our lawbreaking. It is
very risky to actively resist unbridled power. It is especially risky to go
public with resistance (unless hundreds of thousands publicly join us), and
it becomes riskier the closer we get to tyranny. For that reason, among
others, I would never recommend any particular course of action to anyone -
and I hope you'll think twice before taking "advice" from anybody about
things that could jeopardize your life or well-being. But if we don't resist
in the best ways we know how and if a good number of us don't resist loudly
and publicly - all of us will suffer the much worse consequences of living
under total oppression. And whatever courses of action we take, we must
remember that this legislative "revolution" against We the People will not
be stopped by politeness. It will not be stopped by requests. It will not be
stopped by "working within a system" governed by those who regard us as
nothing but cattle. It will not be stopped by pleading for justice from
those who will resort to any degree of trickery or violence to rule us.
It will not be stopped unless we are willing to risk our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honors to stop it. I think of the words of Winston Churchill:
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without
bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so
costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the
odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a
worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory,
because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Notes on the laws listed above:
1. (employee database) Welfare Reform Bill, HR 3734; became public law
104-193 on 8/22/96; see section 453A.
2. (health care crimes) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
of 1996, HR 3103; became public law 104-191 on 8/21/96.
3. (asset confiscation for citizenship change) Same law as #2; see sections
511-513.
4., 5., and 6. (anti-gun laws) Omnibus Appropriations Act, HR 3610; became
public law
104-132 on 9/30/96. 7. and 8. (terrorism & secret trials) Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996; S 735; became public law 104-132 on
4/24/96; see all of Title III, specifically sections 302 and 219; also see
all of Title IV, specifically sections 401, 501, 502, and 503.
9. (de facto national ID card) Began life in the Immigration Control and
Financial Responsibility Act of 1996, sections II, III, 8, 119, 127, and
133; was eventually folded into the Omnibus Appropriations Act, HR 3610
(which was itself formerly called the Defense Appropriations Act - but we
wouldn't want to confuse anyone here, would we?); became public law 104-208
on 9/30/96; see sections 656 and 657 among others.
10. (health care database) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act of 1996, HR 3103; became public law 104-191 on 8/21/96; see sections
262, 263 and 264, among others. The various provisions that make up the full
horror of this database are scattered throughout the bill and may take hours
to track down; this one is stealth legislation at its utmost sneakiest.
And one final, final note: Although I spent aggravating hours verifying the
specifics of these bills (a task I swear I will never waste my life on
again!), the original list of bills at the top of this article was not the
result of extensive research. It was simply what came off the top of my head
when I thought of Big Brotherish bills from the 104th Congress. For all I
know, Congress has passed 10 more times more of that sort of thing. In fact,
the worst "law" on the list -- #9, the de facto national ID card - just came
to my attention as I was writing this essay, thanks to the enormous efforts
of Jackie Junnti and Ed Lyon and others, who researched the law. Think of
it: Thanks to congressional stealth tactics, we had the long-dreaded
national ID card legislation for five months, without a whisper of
discussion, before freedom activists began to find out about it. Makes you
wonder what else might be lurking out there, doesn't it?
And on that cheery note - THE END.
Copyrighted by Claire Wolfe. Permission to reprint freely granted, provided
the article is reprinted in full and that any reprint is accompanied by this
copyright statement.
