From the July 2004 Idaho Observer:

Cowardice, Complicity and Usurpation: Decadence and the decay of America

by Hari Heath

America began with “the shot heard round the world.” Impassioned men and women fought against great odds to claim that great prize of liberty.

Scholar/Warrior/Diplomats gave their all in a fight to end the reign of a tyrant king. King George and his “swarms of officers sent hither to harass our people and eat out our substance,” were toppled from their wall by a rag tag militia of tax protesters, determined to rule themselves as freemen.

They fought side by side as a guerrilla army of citizens and gentlemen. The war was largely a long series of retreats that eventually wore down the British, turning the tide with a few pivotal engagements.

As the American warriors gained their ground and sent the king's men back across the sea, they became scholarly statesmen who crafted a revolutionary new form of government and the American experiment of a Constitutional Republic.

In the beginning, our republic followed the commands of the Constitution which formed it. But it is the nature of power to seek to increase itself. Always.

The founders of our nation knew this tendency well and installed many checks and balances in our national Constitution to limit any excessive collections of power.

The Constitution breaks down the functions of government into three branches and limits the acts and authorities of each one. This being good, but not good enough, the Founders added the Bill of Rights to spell out what rights the people had, thereby placing limits and duties upon those operating within the general government.

Government or administrative regime?

If you bothered to look, you may find that the government set up by the Constitution is not the one we have operating today. Yes the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive offices appear to be occupied, but what force of government actually reaches out and touches you?

Almost always, it is an administrative agency.

Article One, Section One, of the federal Constitution clearly states that all legislative power shall be vested in the Congress. The founders' intent was to require that the power to make law would remain accountable; that only those who were chosen to represent the people or the states could have such power; and if they abused that power they could be removed by election or impeachment.

The Tenth Article of the Bill of Rights further declares limits to that power, commanding that the powers of the federal government are limited to those enumerated by the Constitution and that all other powers are reserved to the states or the people respectively.

In the beginning this was the plan. The constitutional offices and areas of governmental operation were few and limited in their scope. Constitutional government could never be expanded to regulate and meddle in so many areas of our lives. A sovereign people would yield a limited amount of their sovereignty to a government which would serve them. In theory, the people would remain master of their servant.

But, as Lord Acton stated: “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And absolute corruption in our age, has taken the form of administrative agencies.

The Code of Federal Regulations, also known as the CFRs, are unlegislated “laws” laid down by agencies themselves, in defiance of the Constitution's commands. Further defiance of the supreme law takes the form of Executive Orders where the President imposes “laws” made with the stroke of his pen.

This and many other transgressions have led to a corporate government that has been super-imposed over our constitutional government.

Fascism, by definition, is the merger of corporate and state interests which vest power in a single authority. Our military-industrial-media-pharmaceutical-financier controlled-fascist-corporate-federal state has become such an authority.

We daily submit to it in cowardice and complicity. We feed it with allegiance and taxes we do not owe. We choose the illusions of liberty fed to us by its media over the freedom that would be ours if we were willing to undertake the effort to seize and maintain it. We support the grand deception and our own enslavement because we are cowards who choose complicity and compliance with the administrative, fascist state.

Remember, as we celebrate our “independence,” what those brave souls who signed the Declaration of Independence had to say about the king's administrative agencies:

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Do you pay your taxes to an agency? Get permission to drive on “your” highway from an agency? Do agencies issue your permit to build a house, or operate a business, or own a gun?

Is how you farm, or log, or hire a worker controlled by an agency? Does an agency regulate where you get your water from and where it goes to when you're done with it?

Isn't just about everything you use, buy, or own controlled by an agency?

Does the Constitution create any agencies? No!

Do you see how we, as once free and brave Americans, now cowardly submit to innumerable intrusions into our private lives by a host of agencies?

Have we become so placated by our plentiful possessions that we are no longer willing to pledge our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor to the cause of freedom? Do we cower in complicity, surrendering our liberties for the security and benefits offered by the socialist state?

Our Liberty Teeth

Guns used to be common and acceptable in American culture. It is, after all, how we won our freedom from the English king and his agents.

Guns are the liberty teeth of the Bill of Rights. Right after the freedom of religion, to speak and publish, to peaceably assemble, and petition for redress, came the teeth.

The Second Amendment guarantees that each man may possess the means to terminate tyranny. It is nothing less than the right to keep and use whatever force becomes necessary to maintain the high principles of our national trust, the Constitution and that government which is founded by it.

It is nothing less than the right of each man to possess, without infringement, the means by which he can put a permanent hole in the face of tyranny, thereby securing a free state, for himself and his posterity.

But with the socialist programming in the media and our government schools, our liberty teeth have been cast aside as an old set of dentures. The “Right to keep and bear arms” has atrophied because we no longer exercise it. When was the last time you saw a private citizen openly carrying a firearm in a public place?

Many Americans would feel uneasy if their fellow citizens were openly armed. Most have succumbed to the programming that only the police and military should bear arms for us. The social fascists win when American are intimidated into surrendering their rights.

The problem with tyrants is they just don't listen

Our legal remedies to redress the assault of agency intrusions include letter writing to our legislators, voting, suing in court for our rights, or petitioning the executive officers or the agencies themselves.

Sometimes these work, but usually they require a monumental effort before we obtain any success. More often we fail to achieve any justice when we appeal to corrupted courts and executive officers. And legislators cannot afford to help ordinary citizens because they are indebted to the lobbyists who represent the special interests that purchased their offices for them.

When these civil processes fail to achieve the desired result we are then left with a choice between accepting failure or applying the final solution:

The Second Amendment solution.

Perhaps we are too morally guided to use the Second Amendment solution as our founders did with great success. Like the death penalty, it has seen too little use in our time to have any real effect. What percent of murders result in a conviction and the carrying out of a death sentence? Less than one percent? Not hardly a deterrent to the murderer who knows the odds of receiving final justice.

Our tyrants in office and their agents in administrative regimes similarly have not recently been reminded that the Second Amendment applies to them.

Thus, they go on regulating to their hearts content as we suffer intrusions and taxation beyond anything our Founders ever tolerated. And daily we submit!

Just before the American Revolution Samuel Adams said: “If ye love wealth better than freedom; the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel, nor you arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you. And may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Americans today do not seem to understand why we celebrate the Fourth of July. It's not about sparklers and firecrackers, it's about remembering the real bullets and real rockets fired in offense of freedom; it's about remembering those who dedicated their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor and were willing to give their all so that we could live in freedom.

And if we lose our freedom and, therefore, lose our country, how will our posterity remember our contribution to their enslavement -- with a day of silence?

It's time to stand for something.