[Vision2020] To Whom Do We Owe Our Allegiance?

[heirdoug at netscape.net]

To Whom Do We Owe Our Allegiance?
by Allen D. MacNeill
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands:
one nation indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
~ Francis Bellamy (1892)
Our family has a flag. It's a variation of the flag of Robert the 
Bruce, king of Scotland. His was a red lion rampant on a field of gold. 
Ours is a golden lioness rampant on a field of purple. The problem is, 
to fly it correctly would require us to decide which flag should be 
flown higher – our family's flag or the star-spangled banner?
This is not a trivial problem. In fact, it goes to the heart of what is 
wrong with America today. To fly our family's flag correctly (even 
lawfully, in many jurisdictions), we should fly it in such a way as to 
make it clear to anyone seeing it that our family's flag – and 
therefore, by implication, our family – is subordinate to that of the 
United States government (and to the republic for which it stands). And 
therein lies the problem.
It is a basic tenet of libertarian conservatism that one's highest 
allegiance is to one's self and one's family. This principle is 
enshrined in the founding document of the United States of America. 
According to the Declaration of Independence, "[A]ll Men are created 
equal, [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness 
– That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, 
deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that 
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it 
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute 
new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and 
organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely 
to effect their Safety and Happiness."
According to this viewpoint, individual people are sovereign entities, 
and governments are clearly subordinate to "the will of the people." 
Far from altering this relationship, the Constitution of the United 
States codifies these principles into law. It enumerates the very 
limited powers of the federal government, and then in the ninth and 
tenth amendments declares that "The enumeration in the Constitution of 
certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others 
retained by the people" and "The powers not delegated to the United 
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are 
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
What this means is that, except for the powers and responsibilities 
enumerated in the Constitution, the United States government has no 
power or sovereignty over the lives of its citizens. In brief, we own 
ourselves and the government is, at most, our servant.
Today, however, it is clear that to the government and an increasing 
number of the citizens of the United States this situation is reversed. 
The government believes (and, more importantly, acts as if) it owns us 
and we are its servants. This is why the symbolism of the flag is so 
important: the flag of the United States takes precedence over all 
others, including the flag of the family of Lyonesse. In other words, 
in the view of those who would presume to rule us, the president of the 
United States is our lord and sovereign and we are merely his vassals. 
He may take from us and from our families anything he desires: our 
land, our property, our children, even our very lives (via the death 
penalty and the military draft), and the only justification he needs to 
do this is the exercise of pure, naked, overwhelming force.
This is not the way it was supposed to be, friends. There was a time in 
America when the president viewed himself as a servant of the people 
and abjured all signs and symbols of sovereignty. Grover Cleveland 
refused to be treated any differently than ordinary citizens at state 
occasions and is remembered for vetoing a bill providing emergency 
relief to farmers following a natural disaster, on the grounds that to 
do so would legitimize the forcible taking of some citizen's money (via 
taxes) to benefit others. It may come as a surprise to some (especially 
today's Democrats, and most Republicans) that Cleveland was a 
Democrat...and moreover, by his behavior, a true democrat.
Now, however, the candidates from both parties freely and openly state 
their wholehearted support for a government and a presidency that 
clearly recognizes no restraint or challenge to its power except the 
use of violent force. Furthermore, the majority of the voting citizenry 
agrees, and supports those candidates for public office who most 
vigorously propound the doctrine of unlimited force.
For itself, the government asserts a sole monopoly on the use of force 
and recognizes no limits to its use. Every president since Lincoln has, 
in the context of war or the threat of war, justified the unilateral 
and unlimited use of military force and the suspension of individual 
sovereignty (in the context of the military draft) with sole reference 
to the supreme sovereignty of the president and the federal government. 
Nowhere in the Constitution nor any of its amendments is it stated or 
even implied that the States may not secede from the union, nor govern 
their own affairs, nor respect and protect the rights to private 
property of individual citizens. Yet ever since the administration of 
Lincoln, the federal government has unilaterally arrogated to itself 
all of these, and has enforced this usurpation through the use of 
deadly force.
In a world dominated by force alone, only force matters, and the only 
law is the law of force majeure: "might makes right." The founders of 
the American republic believed otherwise, and tried to structure the 
Constitution and the government it created so that there would be 
built-in limits to the unilateral use and abuse of power. They did so 
because they realized that a government founded on force, rather than 
the fully informed consent of the governed, is not a government at all. 
It is tyranny, pure and simple.
To our increasing sorrow, it is clear that tyranny is what we are 
rapidly approaching. To state the case succinctly, the recent history 
of the presidency, congress, the supreme court, many state governments, 
and both major political parties has been a history of repeated 
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment 
of an absolute tyranny over the individual states and ourselves, the 
citizens of those states. Sound familiar?
But, if you've been paying attention recently, you already know most of 
this. The question is, what can we do about the accelerating slide 
toward tyranny? The first and most powerful thing we can do is to 
remember that crucial phrase in the Declaration: that governments, 
including ours, derive their just powers from the consent of the 
governed. So, as many did during the last election, we can withhold our 
consent: we can refuse to vote for those aspiring to be tyrants. We can 
also assert our personal and familial sovereignty over that of the 
tyrannical state by refusing to yield up to it that which it most 
desires: our land, our property, our children, and our lives.
In many cases, we can do this by simply ignoring Leviathan. Ever since 
George Bush stole the presidency in 2000, I've repeatedly found myself 
comforting my friends by pointing out to them that the party in power 
generally has little or no affect on our daily lives, especially out 
here in the hinterlands. So long as you pay as little taxes as you can 
legally get away with (yes, even the IRS has been forced repeatedly to 
admit that this is your constitutional prerogative), the dragon will 
pass you by, unseeing.
However, the time may come – indeed, it may soon be upon us – when the 
dragon will thirst for new blood. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and 
Iran, and Syria, and North Korea, and – who knows – maybe northern 
Virginia) will necessitate the reinstatement of draft slavery. Then we 
must do what we did a generation ago, and the generation before that, 
and the generation before that, but this time in overwhelming numbers: 
we must march on Washington and speak truth to power. And that truth 
will be, as it was then, Hell no, we won't go!
And we can fly our families' flags: proudly, fearlessly, and freely, 
secure in the knowledge that there is where our highest and truest 
allegiance lies.


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