[Home] || [Previous] || [Next] || [Contents] || [E-Mail] || [V&FT]
I told the District Court that by removing Biblical principles from "the public square," the foundations of the oath to "support the Constitution" have been destroyed. Because the oath to "support" the Constitution means nothing, the Constitution likewise means nothing. In fact, without a reference point in Biblical Law, the foundations of Constitutional government - indeed, of civilization itself - have been destroyed.
Part of the broad cultural trend toward secularization has been the U.S. Supreme Court's 20th century declarations that the Constitution creates a "secular state" by "separating" Christian principles from civil government. From the Civil War to the First World War, Secularists believed that they could create law and order in society without reference to Biblical Law, and that beginning with Man as "the measure of all things" they could duplicate the optimism and community made possible by Christianity.[1] America moved from a Christian age to a secular age.
The World Wars destroyed the optimism of the Humanists, and the logic of every-man-his-own-god has destroyed community. Now, in the face of complete epistemological failure, the modern secular state is giving way to the "post-modern" age. Secularists no longer attempt to duplicate Christian categories of meaning; they deny their very existence. Social Scientists must now attempt to explain "The Meaning of Meaning in a Post-Meaning Age."[2] A 1991 survey of 1600 students at three Texas universities revealed that students who have graduated from the secular schools created by Everson and Engle/Schempp not only deny that Christianity is needed to define right and wrong, they deny the distinction. They are nihilists who believe that "systematic knowledge is impossible," solipsists who believe that "my opinion is as valid as that of a more knowledgeable person," and multiculturalists who believe that "all ideas have equal worth."[3]
Without the absolute standard of God's Law objectively codified in the Bible, no law is possible. Social order collapses. The principles of "the Enlightenment" have led to the destruction of knowledge and absolutes in every field of learning.[4] Legal "nihilists" now abound.[5] Returning to the oath taken by his perjured law students, Professor Levinson says, "My students, who would surely take umbrage at being called ''nihilists,' nonetheless treated the words they signed as without genuine meaning."[6]
And this is how the Constitution has been treated.
America is no longer under the British Crown. America is no longer under the Articles of Confederation. And -- not just de facto, but (arguably) de jure, -- America is no longer under the Constitution. To take an oath to "support" a Constitution which no longer exists is to be oblivious to Secularism's march toward tyranny.
Does the Constitution uphold private property? At one time it did, but no longer. In 1933, a state of "national emergency" was declared. Some researchers contend that wartime powers were invoked to suspend the Constitution. World War I produced legislation ("The Trading with the Enemy Act") which was conscripted for duty in Roosevelt's "war" against the "Great Depression." Congress approved his Executive decrees which essentially declared all those who might believe in a Constitutional Free Market to be "enemies" of the State, and the gold of all these "enemies" was confiscated.[7]
In 1973, a special Senate committee led by Senators Frank Church and Charles Mathias confirmed that
Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. [H]undreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers . . . which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes. . . . A majority of the people of the United States have lived all their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. [A]ctions taken by the Government in times of great crises have - from, at least, the Civil War - in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency.[8]In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that it could not be said for certain that an admitted member of the Communist Party, holding positions in the Communist Party's National Committee and being the Party's nominee for Governor of Minnesota, was not "attached to the principles of the Constitution."[9] In addition to working for the violent overthrow of Representative Government, the Communist Party denies the legitimacy of private property. But that was no problem for the Court.[10] Through "New Deal" policies, the "organic law" of the Founders was completely overturned. According to such organic charters as the Declaration of Independence, human beings are created by God with unalienable rights to life, liberty and property. These rights exist prior to the State. No longer. The "theoretical basis" of property rights embodied in the "New Deal" was "far different from what it had been"[11] under America's organic law (e.g., the Declaration of Independence: rights given by God, unalienable by the State):
Property rights, from this [new] perspective, are simply a "delegation" from the state to the citizenry . . . . No longer did "property" represent some prepolitical "natural" entitlement; it now represented a public policy judgment by the state that, overall, important social values would be realized by leaving certain controls in the hands of ordinary citizens.[12]To facilitate the State's unalienable rights over the citizens, "a fourth branch of government"[13] was established, which, to use Madison's words in The Federalist, "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."[14] For years, government officials with strong Communist leanings had "urged differing degrees of governmental ownership and control of natural resources, basic means of production, and banks and the media of exchange, either with or without compensation."[15] Between 1913 and 1937, most of the planks of the Communist Manifesto had been put into law in America[16] by high-ranking government officials, including President Roosevelt;[17] officials who had taken a solemn oath to "support the Constitution," and therefore, according to the Court, officials "whose attachment to the general constitutional scheme cannot be doubted."[18]
To "solemnly swear to support" a Constitution which has been suspended for 60 years is - either knowingly or ignorantly - to rubber-stamp the corporate-martial law that replaced it.[19] Transport any of the Founding Fathers into the last decade of the 20th century. Let them look at our schools, our tax-rates, our mortality rate for pre- born children,[20] and ask them if they will take a (secular) oath to "support the Constitution." I dare say none of them - except perhaps Alexander Hamilton - would take such an oath.[21]
Just months after the Schneiderman case, a Nazi sympathizer, a devotee of Hitler who believed that when one became "Americanized" one was "ruined," was held by the Court to be "attached to the principles of the Constitution."[22]
I told the District Court that such secular, socialistic decisions of the Supreme Court evidence "an unqualified hostility to the most fundamental and universally recognized principles of the Constitution."[23] And since the Constitution is whatever the Court says it is, I would be unable to "support the Constitution," and would certainly be violating the supreme Law of the Land by taking an oath declaring my "support" for the Constitution.[24]
In permitting Nazis and known Communists to take an oath to "Support the Constitution," courts have relied on Article V, which permits Amendments. Thus, a Communist, who might seek to amend the Constitution out of existence and set up a Socialist Dictatorship, is held by the courts to be "attached to the principles of the Constitution," namely (or especially), the "Constitutional principle" of amendment.
I believe that respect for meaning and respect for the oath would have dictated decisions more like that of a decision handed down just prior to the dawn of the New Deal, in which the petitioner was
the editor of a newspaper . . . and through that publication and otherwise he advocates and ardently desires the amendment of the Constitution of the United States. There is, of course, nothing objectionable in a citizen seeking to amend the Constitution. That has been done nineteen times. But to what end does the applicant seek its amendment? To abolish the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments as established . . . . [T]his is more than the amendment of the Constitution. It is nothing short of the destruction of the same. How an individual can seek this result and at the same time state that he [supports] the Constitution . . . is beyond comprehension . . . . Citizenship is available for aliens who in good faith, by their example, and mental attitude disclose their sincere adherence to the political philosophy of the Constitution. Those who come in any other frame of mind are asking for a privilege that they have no right to receive. No matter how well founded their political beliefs may be, conformity to the principles of the Constitution is indispensable.[25]Based on Article V, I have been counseled to avoid prolonged litigation and go ahead and take the oath to "support the Constitution," no matter what that document means, seeing that I can amend the Constitution into whatever I want it to be. I have a strong revulsion against this "make-the-oath-mean-whatever-you-want-it-to-mean,-and-get-it-over-with" attitude. The oath is a sacred and solemn act, not some kind of ceremonial "silly putty."[26]
But in any case, the secularists are one step ahead of Amendment-minded Christians. There appears to be an exception to this "Amendment" rule. There seems to be one kind of Amendment that cannot be suggested;[27] one kind of vision that the Supreme Court has called "abhorrent to our tradition."[28] It's not Naziism. It's not Communism.
Try to guess what it is.
(You'll never guess.)
2. No, I'm not making that up; would that I had to: M. Bruner, et. al., "The Meaning of Meaning in a Post-Meaning Age," 46 Int'l. Soc. Sci. J. 285 (1994). [Return to text]
3. Id. It is said that [abandonment of the Christian epistemology of the Founding Fathers] brings "freedom" and "openness and acceptance," but "we must also be cognizant of the possibility that these very qualities could contribute to unusually, even radically, cynical, nihilistic and solipsistic Weltanschauungs [world-and-life views] among students who not only think that 'they are the world' but who very shortly will be." Id. [Return to text]
4. In law, see J. Whitehead, The Second American Revolution (1982). In philosophy, see R. Rushdoony, The Word of Flux: Modern Man and the Problem of Knowledge (1975) ("Having dispensed with God, man has also in effect dispensed with a knowable universe." at 6.) [Return to text]
5. Levinson, Constitutional Faith, "'Nihilism' and the Professing of Law," 157, citing P. Carrington, "Of Time and the River," 34 J. of Leg. Educ. 222 (1984), and O. Fiss, "The Death of the Law?" 72 Cornell L. Rev. 16 (1986). [Return to text]
6. Levinson, ibid., 183. [Return to text]
7. R. Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan 168-180 (1987). The "limited government" rhetoric of Constitutional conservatives has no effect during a time of "national emergency." [Return to text]
8. Emergency Powers Statutes: Provisions of Federal Law Now in Effect Delegating to the Executive Extraordinary Authority in Time of National Emergency; Report of the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, U.S. Senate, 93rd Cong., 1st Session, iii, 1 (1973).
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, and Iraq also resulted in a number of additional "emergency" measures.
As a result of these hearings, Congress grew jealous of Presidential powers, and in 1976 sought to establish its own authority to determine "national emergencies" and constitutional "enemies." T. Burzynski, "Is the Constitution Suspended?" 12 The New American 15-16 (Feb. 5, 1996). You no doubt noticed the resulting dramatic increase in Constitutional government.
Simply "cancelling" the "national emergency" will do nothing to reverse the trend toward socialism and secularism. [Return to text]
9. The words of the oath of allegiance required for naturalization. Schneiderman v. U.S., 320 U.S. 118, 63 S.Ct. 1333, 87 L.Ed. 1796 (1943). [Return to text]
10. Although it was a problem for Justice Felix Frankfurter, himself a naturalized citizen. Following circulation of a draft opinion in the Schneiderman case, Justice Frankfurter sent a note to Justice Murphy, who authored the opinion, suggesting that the headnote to the opinion in the official reports read:
The American Constitution ain't got no principles. The Communist Party don't stand for nuthin'. The Soopreme Court don't mean nuthin'. Nuthin' means nuthin', and ter Hell with the U.S.A. so long as a guy is attached to the principles of the U.S.S.R.J. Howard, Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography 315 (1968), cited by Levinson, above note 5, 144. [Return to text]
11. S. Levinson, "Unnatural Law" (Review of C. Sunstein, The Partial Constitution) 209 The New Republic 40, 41 (July 19/26, 1993). [Return to text]
12. Idem. See also Senate Doc. 43 (73rd Cong., 1st Sess.): "The ownership of all property is in the State; individual so-called ''ownership' is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State." Quoted in E. Schroder, Constitution: Fact or Fiction, 36 (1995). [Return to text]
13. J. Freedman, Crisis and Legitimacy, 6 (1978). [Return to text]
14. Quoted in A. Gulas, "The American Administrative State: The New Leviathan" 28 Duquesne L Rev. 489, 490 (1990). (With Madison's warning ringing in his ears, the author nevertheless supports the "New Leviathan.") [Return to text]
15. Schneiderman v. U.S., 320 U.S. 118, 141, 87 L.Ed. 1796, 1811 (1943). [Return to text]
16. M. Hendrickson, America's March Toward Communism (1987). [Return to text]
17. J. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (rev. ed. 1956); A. Sutton, Wall Street and FDR (1975). (Sutton was a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.) [Return to text]
18. Schneiderman, above, note 15. Justice McReynolds might have doubted it. Dissenting in an important case upholding flagrantly unconstitutional "New Deal" Legislation, he cried: "This is Nero at his worst. The Constitution is gone." Quoted by E.S. Corwin, Constitutional Revolution, Ltd. 46 (1941). [Return to text]
19. Imagine a group of sinister Anti-Federalists in 1792 seizing control of a small town, cutting off all communication [they didn't have Orwellian Memory-Holes back then] and forcing citizens to take an oath to "support The Articles of Confederation." What possible purpose could such an oath have but to solidify their unconstitutional control over the town? America is no longer governed by the Constitution. [Return to text]
20. Over 32 million killed since 1973. Human Life Alliance of Minnesota, She's a Child, Not a "Choice," 10 (1995). [Return to text]
21. Hamilton would probably be guarding multi-national corporate interests against upstart nationalists and "agrarian reformers" from his positions on the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations. [Return to text]
22. Baumgartner v. U.S., 322 U.S. 665, 669 (1944). See generally J. Flynn, As We Go Marching (1973 [1944]) (comparing "New Deal" fascism with "rule by emergency" under Article 31 of the German Constitution). [Return to text]
23. Schneiderman v. U.S., 320 U.S. 118, 195, 87 L.Ed. 1796, 1839 (1943) (Stone, C.J., dissenting). [Return to text]
24. Cf. Summers. [Return to text]
25. In re Saralieff, 59 F.2d 436, 437 (E.D. Mo. 1932). See also In re Petition for Naturalization of Matz, 296 F.Supp. 927 (E.D. Cal., 1969) (denying naturalization to Jehovah's Witness who, "because of religious training and belief refuses to vote, serve on juries or otherwise participate in government" (at 929) (citing In re Saralieff (at 930n6), and U.S. v. Macintosh, 285 U.S. 605, 51 S.Ct. 570 (at 931n.20) On Macintosh, cf. below, text at notes 192-198). The Saralieff case obviously pre-dates the "post-meaning" age. But the priority it gives to the State still lives. [Return to text]
26. Jesus said, "I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matthew 12:36-37). After studying the metamorphosis of American Government since the Civil War and the repudiation of the Founding Fathers (which, admittedly, most people have never done), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that no more idle words could be spoken than "I swear to support the Constitution." Cf. below, text at note 216. [Return to text]
27. Cf. D. Linder, "What in the Constitution Cannot be Amended," 23 Ariz. L Rev. 717 (1981). [Return to text]
28. Girouard v. U.S., 328 U.S. 61, 69, 66 S.Ct. 826, 829 (1946). [Return to text]