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Timestamp: 2019-04-21 22:47:29+00:00

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Since the scope and purview of all jural societies is the execution of justice against delicts, it’s practically impossible to see how the establishment of "Post Offices and post Roads" can fall under the lawful jurisdiction of a jural society. So we have to ask if it can be under the lawful jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical society of the general government. Thus far, we’ve determined that it’s lawful for the general social compact to have ecclesiastical courts, as long as these courts are paid for by the people who use them, and not through forced taxation. We’ve determined that interstate contractual disputes, including interstate bankruptcies, fall within the scope and purview of such general ecclesiastical courts. Now we’re presented with this question of whether Congress’s power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads" is lawful, according to the global Covenants. As already indicated, starting a new business, namely, establishing post offices and post roads, cannot possibly fall within the strict scope and purview of enforcing against delicts. Whether it can be under the lawful jurisdiction of a general ecclesiastical society depends entirely upon how it’s funded and operated.
If money collected by Congress through forced taxation is used to create these "Post Offices and post Roads", then that money is collected through bloodshed, because Congress did not have authority under the bloodshed mandate to collect money for that purpose. If the money that goes to "establish Post Offices and post Roads" was collected by Congress through voluntary contributions, given through the consent of citizens, then this might be different. But by going into business, Congress is in effect saying that this government created through the ratification of the Constitution is not limited to the strict guideline set up in the Declaration. The Declaration says that "Governments are instituted among Men" "to secure" "certain unalienable Rights". Now this Constitution is saying that Congress, under this new government, is not limited by this, because Congress is now getting the power to start a new business. So according to clause seven, "Governments are instituted among Men" to run businesses and do construction projects. — Really?
Some people might claim that setting up ecclesiastical courts is also a little weird, because it doesn’t stick strictly to the jural guidelines. But as long as such ecclesiastical courts are used through prior consent, and paid for through prior consent, they are not in violation of the jural guidelines. The ecclesiastical courts exist to adjudicate contract disputes regarding property. Likewise, as long as post offices and post roads are used through prior consent, and paid for through prior consent, they are not in violation of the jural guidelines. So in both the case of ecclesiastical courts, and the case of post offices and post roads, Congress is in effect creating a type of business. But in the case of ecclesiastical courts, the business is all about rendering equity in contractual disputes that pertain to property, whereas in the case of the post offices and post roads, the business is all about setting up communications and transportation businesses. Such ecclesiastical courts are inherently lawful, and are therefore a reasonable companion to jural courts, assuming that they are funded consensually. But post offices and post roads are not inherently jural, and they are not inherently ecclesiastical unless they involve contracts executed, operated, and adjudicated by consent. They are a strange bedfellow to jural courts. Even so, we might forgive the framers, and overlook their eccentricity in this case, if we could safely assume that Congress perpetrated no bloodshed in the establishment of these post offices and post roads. Is this a safe assumption? — No!
From the beginning, Congress has used confiscatory taxation to establish these post offices and post roads. In fact, even to the present day, Congress uses confiscatory taxation to pay for these things. Congress did a partial privatization of the "Post Offices" in the early 1970s by creating the United States Postal Service, which was supposedly to be a self-supporting corporation. But the evidence provided by the almost incessant hikes in the cost of 1st class mail late in the past century shows that the U.S.P.S. has had great difficulty in supporting itself. But that’s not as damning as the fact that Congress has given the U.S.P.S. a legal monopoly in 1st class mail. In other words, if you and some of your friends want to start your own post office, you should be very careful about how you do it. Otherwise, you’ll end up in jail. That’s because not only has Congress used confiscatory taxation to establish and maintain these "Post Offices", but Congress has also arbitrarily made competition with its pet "Post Offices" a malum prohibitum – a crime, not because it’s inherently wrong, but because Congress has arbitrarily decided to make it so. — The story with regard to "post Roads" is not any better. Congress continues to confiscate property without the consent of the owner (to take it) in order to support highway construction and maintenance. Following the pattern laid down in this clause of the Constitution, governments at every level are almost the sole owners of the roads and highways in this country. In other words, they practically have a monopoly in highway construction, maintenance, and policing. None of this, neither the "Post Offices" nor the "post Roads", falls within the scope and purview of the global covenant discovered in the investigation. The way they are funded is wrong. The way they are operated is wrong.
In law, as in anything else, starting with an erroneous premise will almost inevitably result in an erroneous conclusion. Starting with a bad clause in the Constitution led inevitably to a bad implementation of the clause. — Regarding roads and highways, even though Article I § 8 clause 7 only authorizes the building of post roads (roads for delivery of mail), the general government became involved in general-purpose interstate road building from early in the 19th century. Even before the Federal Highway Act of 1956, the general government provided funding to the States for building highways. 3 But the 1956 act promoted the general government into being the monopolistic big brother of the highway business, commensurate with its new status as big mama to the Welfare State, and central planner and controller of the nation’s commerce. Its ownership of the highways gave the general government the excuse it apparently desired, to void lawful standards of search and seizure regarding citizens’ cars, whenever and wherever it chose – more monolithic police powers.
There must be some other way of constructing, maintaining, and policing post offices, post roads, highways, etc., that doesn’t violate basic rights. 4 If the postal systems and highways were the only enterprises that the general government started and operated, then this would be a different and probably better country. This doesn’t mean that postal systems and highways are bad. It just means that they could have come into existence and operation without violation of unalienable Rights. But they didn’t, and that’s because we, as a people, didn’t know and/or care to do better. We learn as we go along. The point, now that we know better, is that all the business operations of the general government, including highways, postal systems, and countless others, including the internet, 5 need to be utterly privatized, and any laws protecting government ownership of such systems need to be amended or repealed.
This clause is essentially about copyrights and patents. In it the framers indicate that "Authors and Inventors" are justified in having property rights recognized, with respect to their creations. By "securing for limited Times . . . the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", the framers insured that "Authors and Inventors" would not have their incentive to create destroyed by lack of appropriate remuneration. This kind of protection of property is well within the scope and purview of any jural society. Unfortunately, this clause has been used to do more than protect property rights.
Apparently, Congress has seen fit "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" regardless of anyone’s property rights. If they had strictly construed this clause, and limited themselves to its content, this clause would in no way conflict with the global covenant. But Congress has exercised a power to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in ways well beyond the confines of copyrights and patents. For example, they fund the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is the financial source for most of the scientific research conducted in this country. The NSF does research into many areas whose potential usefulness is dubious, at best. But the real problem with this is that funding research has nothing to do with protecting property rights. Therefore, if Congress insists on funding research, it had better do so without using funds collected through confiscatory taxation. But this is precisely what Congress does, because Congress refuses to make a direct linkage between taxation and spending. They use confiscatory taxation for most of their revenues, then spend the money on whatever they want. In other words, Congress extravagantly perpetrates bloodshed against practically every adult American on a regular basis. Many of us, like obedient slaves, acquiesce. Citizens who genuinely care about justice cannot afford to do so. Christians who have a genuine commitment to biblical standards of morality should be most wary of how Congress funds the NSF, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Public Broadcasting System, etc.
Article I § 8 cl 10 spells out legitimate powers of a jural society. This clause obviously pertains to the establishment of positive law pertinent to maritime issues, and to delicts perpetrated outside the geographical boundaries of the general government. On its face, there appears to be nothing inherently outside the scope and purview of the global covenant about this term of the general social compact. But before we conclude that there is nothing inherently wrong with this clause under the original intent of the framers, we should look more thoroughly at "Piracies", "Felonies", and "Law of Nations", especially from the framers’ perspective.
Obviously, the meaning of law of nations is heavily dependent upon the definition of natural law. This is because (i)wherever "mutual compacts, treaties, leagues, and agreements" between two or more nations do not exist, such nations are automatically dependent upon "the rules of natural law"; and (ii)wherever mutual compacts, etc., do exist, interpreting such mutual compacts, etc., depends upon "the rules of natural law". So the content of this set of laws that exists between nations is composed of (i)natural law, (ii)customs and usages, and (iii)"compacts, treaties, leagues, and agreements"; and natural law, whatever that is, is used to interpret customs / usages and compacts / treaties / etc. This begs the question: What did Blackstone mean by "natural law"?
We believe the natural law can be distilled down to the demands to love God and love neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40), with the Ten Commandments as an overview of how these two "love" commands are to work out in more detail. Even so, since the highest pleasure for a true Christian is to live in conformity to these demands, Blackstone’s claim "‘that a man should pursue his own true and substantial happiness’" is the same as such Christian Hedonism. 16 Under these circumstances, and only these circumstances, Blackstone is correct in saying that "This is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law".
Again, unlike Blackstone, we believe that it is not valid to derive human law directly ("immediately") from natural law. Humans are far too flawed for this. Instead human law needs to be derived primarily from Scripture by way of a specific hermeneutic that is aimed specifically at doing that. The resulting biblical prescription of human law will be rationally harmonious with natural law. But the big difference between Blackstone’s approach and our approach is that he makes an attempt – at least nominally – at deriving human law directly from natural law, whereas we’re convinced that such immediate derivation produces far too many negative side-effects, and is therefore only marginally reliable.
We’re convinced that human reason is so corrupt and human understanding is so "full of ignorance and error" that human reason and understanding are only marginally reliable as tools for deriving human law from natural law. It’s therefore necessary to return to Scripture for a fresh reading aimed specifically at finding the Bible’s prescription of human law. These marginally reliable tools will be useful in that.
He clearly recognizes the superiority of Scripture as determinant of both natural law and human law. We agree that secular systems are rather pathetic in comparison. Even so, evidence in the rest of his Commentaries indicates that he has not relied adequately enough on Scripture, and has relied heavily on secular legal systems and secular writers.
He is clearly in agreement with Augustine that "Unjust laws are not laws". We agree with Blackstone and Augustine on this point. We differ only in our commitment to using a specific biblical hermeneutic to ascertain the Bible’s prescription of human law.
As we’ve already indicated, Blackstone defines the law of nations in terms of the natural law. Here he indicates that "the law of nations" is equivalent in many respects to feudalism. This and other evidence shows that the law of nations is largely feudal in Blackstone’s view. Since feudalism is at odds with the basic biblical fact that all people are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, because it assumes that all people except the monarch have an inherently impaired status before the law, i.e., before human law, feudalism is an inherently sick system. All mention of it in American laws needs to be scrutinized with extreme caution, because at all those points where American law depends upon feudal presuppositions, our government defaults into taking power out of the hands of individuals and to give it to government. There are several extremely weak parts of the Constitution. They are weak because they defaulted into dependency upon feudalism. They are weak because they were dependent upon ill-conceived natural law even in the original intent of the framers. Here are three of the most obvious of these points of weakness: (i)the underlying definition of sovereignty, (ii)the underlying definition of property rights, and (iii)the underlying definition of the law of nations. — (i)The most obvious weakness in the framers’ definition of sovereignty shows up in their making the nation an accomplice to slavery. 25 How can one define sovereignty in terms of individual rights while simultaneously denying such rights to a huge segment of the population? Only by warping the definition into something inherently ugly. (ii)The most obvious weakness in the framers’ definition of the individual’s right to own property shows up in the open-ended-ness of taxation and takings, which entails a default into feudalism. In other words the moral linkage between revenue / property-procuration and government spending is left almost totally undefined, and therefore defaults into being feudal. (iii)The most obvious weakness in the framers’ definition of the law of nations shows up in how treaties have been implemented. Article II § 2 cl 2 gives the President the power to entangle the nation in treaties, with the advice and consent of two thirds of the Senate. 26 Article VI cl 2 makes such treaties the "supreme Law of the Land", meaning that they can be imposed on citizens of States within the borders of those States without the consent of such States or such citizens. 27 This is a huge problem. It was a problem in the original Constitution. It’s a problem that weighs ever more heavily on all of us as the original division of police powers is supplanted exponentially by police powers based in international law / treaties. Activities that were never "Offenses against the Law of Nations" are increasingly so.
The original Constitution contained a very limited number of crimes. 30 Out of this limited number, "Piracy and Felonies committed on the high Seas" are not, on their face, at odds with the biblical principles that characterize a reliable secular social compact. On their face, neither do "Offenses against the Law of Nations". The law of nations is essentially the same thing as international law. International law is governed by treaties. Article II § 2 cl 2 gives the President the power to make treaties, "provided two thirds of the Senators . . . concur". 31 This appears innocuous enough on its face. But big problems arise when one looks at the prospect of imposing on State citizens the terms of a treaty. During the last century, treaties were one of the primary means by which agents of quasi-Marxism were able to impose criminal sanctions against ordinary Americans who were merely exercising their unalienable Rights to contract and to own and use property. Such treaties, when translated into federal statutes, made ordinary people who were guilty of no malum in se, guilty of "Offenses against the Law of Nations". But this could never have happened without a skewed understanding of the Supremacy Clause. 32 That’s because "all Treaties made" in Article VI cl 2 was interpreted by the judicial branch of the general government as being "supreme" over both the laws of the States and the unalienable Rights of people living within those states. Treaties have thus been a primary means by which Congress has been able to exceed its lawful authority. According to Article I § 8 cl 17, 33 the organic Constitution gave Congress power "To exercise exclusive Legislation" over these geographical jurisdictions, and over these alone: (i)the District of Columbia; (ii)"all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State". Article IV § 3 cl 2 gave Congress the same exclusive power with respect to territories. 34 With the great help of such treaties, States have turned into mere administrative provinces.
Article I § 8 cl 11-16 spell out very legitimate powers of a jural society. These clauses pertain to the powers to execute war and establish military forces. There is nothing inherently outside the scope and purview of the global covenant about any of these terms of the general social compact. But how these powers are pursued is an altogether different issue from their face-value lawfulness.
This clause spells out a very legitimate power of a jural society. This clause indicates the geographical jurisdiction over which Congress has "Power . . . To exercise exclusive Legislation". "[E]xclusive Legislation" means that Congress doesn’t share this legislative power with any other legislative body. Whenever Congress shares legislative power with a State legislature, it lacks "Power . . . To exercise exclusive Legislation".
This clause specifies two classes of geographical jurisdiction over which Congress has exclusive legislative power: over "the Seat of Government" (the District of Columbia) and "over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State". According to this, Congress clearly lacks power to legislate exclusively over matters internal to a State’s geographical jurisdiction, (i)unless land inside the State’s borders has been set aside specifically for the purpose of allowing the general government to exercise exclusive powers of legislation on it; (ii)unless the State legislature has consented to this arrangement; and (iii)unless the given acreage has been purchased at the agreed price. So clearly, congressional powers are purely secondary to the powers of the State legislature, within a State’s geographical jurisdiction, when such lands have not been purchased in accordance with these three criteria. At least this is true within the original intent of the framers.
There is nothing wrong with this clause other than its open-endedness. This phrase, "necessary and proper", is practically as much a blank check as the "general Welfare" phrase in Article I § 8 cl 1. 36 The legal name given to this blank check is penumbra doctrine. 37 The size of the check depends entirely upon how "necessary" and "proper" are defined. Throughout the 20th century, "necessary" was defined every time a politician said "war" or "emergency"; and "proper" was defined every time any politician cited any deficiency in health, safety, welfare, or morals. The combined effect was a grandiose expansion in national police powers, essentially steering the united States towards maturation as a police state.
Unlike these politicians, we are attempting here to discover, hold to, and build on, our foundations. In contrast, the average 20th century politician has abandoned foundations at every possible opportunity, seeing emergencies everywhere and claiming, like Chicken Little, that the sky is falling.
There is a pattern to this abandonment of legal foundations via the penumbra doctrine: (1)The government interferes with private property rights, thereby creating a market distortion in which people are harmed. (2)The government misidentifies the cause of the harm. (3)The government creates a solution to the problem that causes more harm, overall, than the original market distortion. — This pattern applies to every act of regulating the economy. In some respects, it also applies to the "Civil War". The latter is true even though it is fundamentally unlawful, according to the investigation, to claim that human beings can be private property. The reason it applies also to slavery is because any time that a jural society misidentifies a delict, and either takes action, or refuses to take action, based on that misidentification, someone gets harmed. When the entire body politic gets harmed, it’s often more difficult to discern the mistake than it is when a solitary individual gets abused by government. Often when an individual suffers a government-perpetrated delict, the case goes into the courts, gets mis-adjudicated, receives little publicity, the public stays dumb to the injustice, no one is overtly harmed except the single individual, and people aware of the abuse go incensed but impotent. In contrast, often when government perpetrates a mass-delict against the general population, the government’s mistake goes generally unidentified, and the population stays dumb to it, because people generally rely on human law to tell them the difference between right and wrong, rather than relying on a lawful moral system that supersedes human law. So the government generally gets away with this pattern of (i)abusing private property; (ii)pretending to be innocent and blaming someone or something else for the harm done; and (iii)creating a presumed solution that aggravates the original problem. — This pattern is especially obvious when one considers the manner in which the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 laid the foundations for the bankruptcy of the general government in 1933.
12 Writings of James Madison, pp. 184-185. — Supreme Court Justice O’Connor used this quote in her dissenting opinion in Boerne v. Flores.
2Pertinent videos: "Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve", URL: https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=​YLYL_NVU1bg and "America: Freedom to Fascism", URL: https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=​uNNeVu8wUak.
3Carson’s Basic History of the United States, Vol. 5, p. 195.
4To see more about why it’s not a good idea for a secular social compact to run a business, see the 10th Amendment, URL: ./0_7_Am_X.htm.
5The internet was created originally by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the general government’s Department of Defense, as ARPANET. It evolved from ARPANET into the internet. (See Hauben’s "History of ARPANET", URL: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/​sociopolitica/​sociopol_DARPA10.htm.) Does this mean that the internet is owned by the government? Or does it mean that the internet is the collective property of the citizens? — It can be lawfully owned by the government only if the government has followed the consent guidelines that pertain to jural and ecclesiastical societies. Of course, this is not the case.
7We should note in passing that "There are only a few crimes mentioned in the U.S. Constitution which Congress can make penal: "treason, via Art. 1, §6, cl. 1; counterfeiting, via Art. 1, §8, cl. 6; and piracy, felonies on the high seas and offenses against the laws of nations, via Art. 1, §8, cl. 10.". — Becraft’s "Treaties: A Source for Federal Municipal Power", endnote #2, URL: http://home.hiwaay.net/​%7Ebecraft/​TREATIES.html.
10Article III § 2 cl 1, URL: ./0_4_1_0_0_Art_III_Sec_2_Cl_1_(Intro).htm.
11Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
12It may be impossible to determine with absolute certainty what Blackstone meant by "freewill", since he was more law professor than theologian. But we should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume, until proven otherwise, that he meant "freewill" in the sense that agrees with "Calvinistic compatibilism" and stands in opposition to the Semi-Pelagian (URL: http://www.the-highway.com/​pelagian_Sproul.html) view of "free-will". — "Calvinistic compatibilism" is a doctrine that "holds that absolute divine sovereignty is compatible with human significance and real human choices" (Systematic Theology, p. 316).
13Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
14The distinction between eternal law and natural law is addressed in more detail in both the theodicy and the Hermeneutical Prolegomenon, URL: ../1_Helps/​1_6_Herm_Proleg_R.htm.
15Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
16Regarding "Christian Hedonism", URL: http://www.enjoyinggodministries.com/​article/​what-is-christian-hedonism.
17Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
18Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
19Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
20For more about the four overarching categories of law, see the theodicy and the Hermeneutical Prolegomenon, URL: ../1_Helps/​1_6_Herm_Proleg_R.htm.
21Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
22Blackstone’s Commentaries, Introduction, Section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General". — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
23For more about this definition of natural law, see the theodicy and the Hermeneutical Prolegomenon, URL: ../1_Helps/​1_6_Herm_Proleg_R.htm.
24Blackstone’s Commentaries, Book 2, Chapter 4, "Of the Feudal System": — See Blackstone at LONANG, URL: http://www.lonang.com/​exlibris/​blackstone/​index.html.
25See Article I § 2 cl 3, URL: ./0_2_0_Art_I_Sec_1-7.htm​#Art1Sec2Cl3.
26See Article II § 2 cl 2, URL: ./0_3_Art_II.htm​#Article2Sec2Cl2.
27See Article VI cl 2, URL: ./0_5_Art_IV-VII.htm​#SupremacyCl.
28See Article II § 2 cl 2, URL: ./0_3_Art_II.htm​#Article2Sec2Cl2.
29For more about the dangers of treaties, see Article VI cl 2, URL: ./0_5_Art_IV-VII.htm​#Article6Cl2.
30They are: "treason, via Art. 1, §6, cl. 1; counterfeiting, via Art. 1, §8, cl. 6; and piracy, felonies on the high seas and offenses against the laws of nations, via Art. 1, §8, cl. 10.". — Becraft’s "Treaties: A Source for Federal Municipal Power", endnote #2, URL: http://home.hiwaay.net/​%7Ebecraft/​TREATIES.html.
31See Article II § 2 cl 2, URL: ./0_3_Art_II.htm​#Article2Sec2Cl2.
34See Article IV § 3 cl 2, URL: ./0_5_Art_IV-VII.htm​#Art4Sec3cl2.
36The arguments that apply to that phrase also apply here. See URL: ./0_2_1_0_Art_I_Sec_8_Cl_1.htm​#Article1Sec8Cl1.
37def.: penumbra doctrine — "The implied powers of the federal government predicated on the Necessary and Proper Clause of the U.S.Const., Art. I Sec. 8(18), permits one implied power to be engrafted on another implied power [(according to the most prevalent interpretation of the Constitution)]. Kohl v. U. S., 91 U.S. 367, 23 L.Ed. 449." (Black’s 5th; p. 1022).

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