I received this letter from Ron Paul from an attorney who sends out regular, very informative list serve on email. Her name is Connie Fogal and she was a key member of the Canadian Action Party in the context in which I knew her.
I agree with these people regarding the symptoms of what we face, but like Alex Jones, Paul Craig Roberts, Bob Chapman, Dr. Stan Monteith, Alan Watt (The Canadian- www.cuttingthroughthematrix.ca), and the rest of the Patriot movement, they ignore the basic problem at its core.
The sum of human experience consists of space, time, good and evil. Our left brains are concerned with space and time, this is the domain of science and mathematics. The right brain deals with good and evil, this is the domain of art, literature, music and humour, the subjects that deal with the nature of good and evil. No philosopher breaks down human experience in the way that Immanual Kant does and this material is explained, not in these words, but fully and completely, in an oblique way, in his Critique Of Pure Reason- at least that's what I get from it.
As art, literature, music and humour are destroyed, as we no longer apply reason to the nature of good and evil, we defer to power, making it absolute. Absolute power corrupts the human experience in the context of consciousness itself, it destroys consciousness of what is good and evil. The fundamental tenet of Marxism is that consciousness never existed before society, but consciousness he must surely mean the knowledge of good and evil. As we no longer apply reason to the problems of good and evil, but defer to authority in these matters, society, as we know it gets destroyed.
There are nihilists and anti-nihilists, ones that are in favour of the destruction of society and ones that are not. The nihilists believe that human experience has become sterile, we no longer have great stories to tell. Life is dull and boring. I believe this is true, we will become weak in the long run, eventually becoming creatures that eat potatoe chips and sit around watching TV - figuratively speaking. I am an anti nihilist, not because I disagree with these ideas but because of the fact that these changes that need to occur are being brought about by children who will only destroy themselves in the end as well as the rest of us.
The only solution is for us to learn to apply reason to the nature of good and evil, to recognize that sending soldiers overseas to kill people they have never met based on the threat of terrorism, such as we pretend to see in the 9/11 attacks is pure insanity at a most basic level. Anyone with any brains, or any guts, can see 9/11 was an inside job. Most people defer to authority and do not protest paying for the wars. Wars are patriotic, wars are good - wars give us culture. Really it is not wars that give us culture, it is our knowledge of good and evil that give us art music, literature and humour.
The solution is to begin to learn the meaning of our words. This was John Lockes famous hypothesis, that conflict occurs primarily through misunderstanding (modern life gave us the psychopath, making this sometimes impossible) but if we began by learning the difference between a lawyer and an attorney, the necessity of continuing this learning would become apparent.
We would soon no longer be burdened with a debt that in reality does not exist. It is a maxim of law that debtors have no rights. Law is the child of reason, not authority. WE displace law with the legal system. Law preserves the natural right of man, the legal system preserves the natural right of kings by making us acknowledge a phoney debt as real, thus giving up our rights.
Our money isn't really debt money, as we are lead to believe - its not even money. It contains no intrinsic value, has no promise backing it. The only thing that makes it worth anything is our willingness to work for it. Therefore there is no national debt. This debt exists in in the imagination of attorneys and totalitarian government idealogues and tyrants. We have not given up our natural right because of the debt unless we choose to defer to authority rather than reason.
There is nothing new about the rights being claimed by the president below, they are the rights of a debt holder over a debtor. We will be destroyed by a police state because we no longer apply reason to the problem of good and evil, but defer to authority.
Immanual Kant, in his essay called "What Is Enlightenment" explains the nature of freedom and the necessity of having the courage to (in his words translated from German), "have the courage to use your own reason". Unlike most of Kant's writings "What Is Enlightenment" is very easy to read and understand.
Here is the letter from Ron Paul:
Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say “I’m not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry.” However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.
The PATRIOT Act, as bad is its violation of the 4th Amendment, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) continues that slip toward tyranny and in fact accelerates it significantly. The main section of concern, Section 1021 of the NDAA Conference Report, does to the 5th Amendment what the PATRIOT Act does to the 4th. The 5th Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning. It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented or access to legal counsel.
The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes “substantial” support? What if it was discovered that someone who committed a terrorist act was once involved with a charity? Or supported a political candidate? Are all donors of that charity or supporters of that candidate now suspect, and subject to indefinite detainment? Is that charity now an associated force?
Additionally, this legislation codifies in law for the first time authority to detain Americans that has to this point only been claimed by President Obama. According to subsection (e) of section 1021, “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” This means the president’s widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law. That should chill all of us to our cores.
The Bill of Rights has no exemptions for “really bad people” or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the bill of rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire Unites States is a battlefield in the War on Terror. This is a very dangerous development indeed. Beware.
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