Dec 11, 2022
United States, Interrupted
The Founding Fathers and their unfinished work.
Let’s cut the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter.
The Founding Fathers gave us our freedom and the States took it away.
Here is the story about ideals and power, and how our ideals got subdued by special State powers in the United States of America.
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The first true revolution — and the reason we call something a revolution — is the discovery that planet Earth is making a revolution around the Sun in a year. This truth was a complete break with the prior understanding of the Sun spinning around the Earth in a day.
Instead of having a celestial system with Earth situated in the center, it turned out that Earth was itself (a lesser) part of a much larger system. This new information enlightened people as they had never experienced before.
The perceived top dog — Earth, we ourselves — was not the top dog at all, but rather we were on the back of one of the planets in a larger system not based on us. We participated in the Solar System; we were not in the lead.
- These new insights had major reverberations throughout ancient societies, undermining their old patterns of power, breaking all their old assumptions.
Not someone’s foot ended up being a scientific measurement, but rather the meter, squarely based on the circumference of … the planet.
Not the Great Council’s decision back in the Year 1075 helped form the legal reality of today, but rather a complete set of rules — all in agreement with one another. Many nations have a modern, revolutionary constitution as their legal bedrock.
A reversal of roles got enshrined, a reshuffling of positions took place with the absolute power of the highest position undermined. Even power got subjected fully to the rule of law therefore. Not a person, not a collection of people, but an enlightened document ended up in highest position.
That was the case in many places. Just not in the UK.
And as it happened to be, the United States of America got the same hand shake. That is, the people of the United States of America got the same lousy deal as the British people. For them, power held on to some parts of the ancient regimes.
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The Founding Fathers established a legal bedrock. Nothing less than the United States Constitution does rule the nation, whereas in Britain the judges sit above all, ruling with unrestrained powers, suppressing the British people with their old-world lust for power.
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So, what happened?
Why do we not have the freedoms that the Founding Fathers enshrined in the US Constitution?
The individual States did not play along.
Though they all signed on to the US Constitution as highest document to guide us all, the States were jealous of the power of the Federation. They did not want to be subjected to its power, even after signing the treaty. Instead, they wanted to be each other’s equals and they wanted to be equal to the Federal government of the United States itself.
- Better still, the States wanted their constitutions to be equals to the United States Constitution and ignored the US Constitution as long as they could get away with it.
The States grabbed power anywhere they could and ended up bringing the promised freedoms of the United States down. The American Revolution was interrupted by the individual States. The States could not grab power directly from the Federation and so they took it from you. Exactly what the British powers that be had done to their own people.
The Sun was in the center, but the Earthly powers in Britain and the Anglo territories held on with all their might. Culture became more powerful than scientific facts.
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The Fourteenth Amendment:
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
The important word to note here: privilege.
Once something is declared a privilege, no one can take that away from you. When voting is declared a privilege, then no one can take that away from you.
Yet the British found a way, and it got applied to the Americas as well.
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With King Henry the Eight denying the Roman Catholic Church its power over England, we see a rejection of the original order. Next, however, the Church of England is made part of the new local order, exactly how that suited the king.
This was the pattern that remained in place during the period known as the Enlightenment and that continues to today. In the UK, one hand of power gives whereas the other hand of power takes. For the English, the revolutionary idea of the Sun circling the Earth in a day was somehow true. And yet the British exclusive formats were not replaced by any inclusive formats, but got replaced with something halfway in between.
Voters were not given representation. Voters were given the right to vote, but were not guaranteed representation.
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Let’s look at Canada to see better what is going on.
The English speaking provinces of Canada have Case Law (known locally as Common Law), while the French speaking areas have Enlightened Law (Civil Law). As such, the national laws of Canada all have to be based on Enlightened Law simply because Quebec has to agree to all national laws.
This means that the English speaking provinces can have their Case Law within their own province, but that the national legal layer, applicable to all, can only be based on Enlightened Law.
It means that at the national level, all Canadian laws are based on a set of laws and that these laws will not be in disagreement with one another.
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Few folks realize the impact it has that the UK does not have a constitution. It is one of the few nations in the world without a constitution (but not the only one). There was no revolution in the UK.
So, anyone saying that the legal system of the USA is based on English Law does not pronounce an exacting truth. The UK does not have a constitution, and as such they do not have a full and solid foundation underneath all their jurisprudence. In the UK, the legal reality is based on chunks of legislation, various documents that folks there agree are legally important, and based on whatever judges may (or may not) say in the Supreme Court of the UK. The highest reality in the UK is therefore still declared by the judges. We do not have that.
- In the United States, the US Supreme Court is not the highest legal entity of the nation. That may come as a surprise, but the answer is quite simple: the US Constitution is the highest legal entity of the nation. Not the judges sit in highest position; the US Constitution sits in highest position.
We are therefore nothing like the UK because our legal system incorporates the ideals of the Enlightenment and we have a foundation that not even judges can undermine with their decisions. If we don’t like what the US Constitution says, then there are opportunities to change it. Yet judges cannot change the US Constitution. Recognize therefore that the judges of England can still be seen as the highest legal gods in their nation, and that is not what we have.
It is easy to miss the specific distinction, but the British judges will play by the books, while our judges must play by the book. It does not mean there is a straight-jacket in US legal reality, but rather that there is a foundation that is solid like a rock. The UK does not have a solid legal rock to stand on; what they have is more like a net.
Today, too many believe the Supreme Court is the highest legal entity in the USA and they actually bend toward (and sometimes backwards to) these Justices’ decisions. All, because many believe that English Law is the ultimate game we play. That is so not true. We have to play by the book, and that book is enlightened.
If this was the end of the story, then the American Revolution succeeded. Yet that is not what happened.
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Today, neither the British, the Canadians, nor the people of the United States are given actual Voter Equality. We have Voter Equality as a privilege on the books, and yet all three nations — using different legal systems — ended up in the same spot, all denying Voter Equality; our US governmental officials are holding up a rather specific mirror that benefits them (the political elite) and does not benefit us.
- We were had, and we often don’t even notice it, looking into the presented mirror thinking it is the promised mirror.
Not the Founding Fathers created the American lie; the individual States established the lie. The medieval powers took as much as they could get away with and this was most feasible at the individual State level. We did not get what the highest document in the nation prescribes.
Meanwhile, we stake the claim that we are the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Culturally, we were had by the individual States not delivering us our privileges, though we must look in the actual mirror to see what happened. The horrible truth is that We the People embraced the worst possible claim that we already got everything we desired indeed. The individual States made us believe how all that we were promised is in place already.
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United States, interrupted.
Not the judgements made over the years tell us our legal story (because that would be the same then as the legal reality they have in place in the UK), but through reiteration-after-reiteration we find what makes the United States have its own and very special legal reality.
While the culture can be seen as somewhat Anglo, we have an Enlightened foundation to contend with, a struggle to make the Enlightenment ours. In a way, we are more like the European mainland in our National Framework, but the State powers make us be like the UK at the local and State levels. In effect, we are still the result of these dragged-out European conflicts that took place over centuries. The Enlightenment is still the essence of our struggle.
- We the People got turned into a cartoon. The elite is still in full control and while the elite handed out voting rights, they took away our very own Voter Equality at State and local levels.
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Unless declared in specifics to follow a different format, voting is a privilege that is guaranteed in the US Constitution, equality its characteristic.
Only where the Founding Fathers told us explicitly how to vote (Presidential and Senatorial elections are declared in detail), only then must we veer away from our privilege. Only then should we allow powers to be concentrated, so the nation is strong when faced with foreign enemies and extreme internal conflicts.
Under all conditions that follow the general regulations of the US Constitution, our elections have to abide to that highest standard.
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Here are the two major points once more:
- A voting system that turns voters into haves and have-nots in light of representation is of course not a privilege (not getting represented by your own vote is not a privilege). Such a system is definitively not enlightened; it’s half-waxed, definitively immature, British.
- Having a constitution is enlightened. While not perfect, our US Constitution is of an extremely good quality. It shows the ideals the Founding Fathers wanted us to have, including the enlightened voting formats; the local level is an excellent starting point to get the full version of voter equality in place today. State and local officials have nothing on their hands to prevent us from getting what is ours.
The folks in power pushed for more control of the States and took parts of our American freedoms away. The State powers realized that the ultimate power was with the US Constitution indeed, and they did not like that at all. The States started to spin the legal truth so they would get on par with the Federation. The State powers that be denied us our Thomas Jefferson voting system. The State powers that be did not want to give us our political freedom at the local and state level, exactly what was promised to us.
- We have not yet completed the American Revolution.
Come help our grassroots organization and make sure that all voters have their own seats at all those tables that we are all entitled to be sitting at. The local level is the perfect legal place to start. We did not finish our American revolution. We hope you will end that winner-take-all dictatorship in all spots not intended by the Founding Fathers.
Claim your privilege.
