Another Aesop Fable: The Productive Burglar

In which we learn that most folks will object to having done in their own homes exactly those things that they insist illegal aliens have the right to do in our Nation. A man broke into a home. Inside the house, he found the kitchen, made a sandwich, poured himself a glass of milk, and enjoyed his repast. He found the bathroom, toileted, showered, and treated the glass cuts he got on his hand using the first aid kit under the bathroom sink. In the family room, there were shelves and shelves of books. He found an interesting one, and read for hours. When the family came home, he had discovered that the dad worked from home as a call center operator, had signed in on the dad's accounts and was handling calls. The mother of the family called the police. "We have a trespasser in the home. He's taken our food, used our medical supplies, used our school books, and is currently on the computer doing call center work that my husband's job," she explained. The police dispatched officers. The officers arrived on the scene. After investigating, the officers excoriated the family for their discriminatory and selfish attitude. "It ought to be a crime," the one officer stated, "people like you calling others illegal intruders. It's plain as the nose on my face that he's simply an undocumented family member." "Are you going to arrest him? Remove him?" "M'am," the officer replied, "your problem is you've focused on such an artificial construct as property lines, and private ownership. People like you demean and humiliate men like this. Obviously, he's not interested in a free ride. He was the saucer and glass and utensils he used, he wiped down the shower after using it, he put the used medical supplies in the trash, and now he's handling your husband's work for him, work your husband probably complains about having to do." "So, are you going to make him leave?" "No, m'am," he explained, "there are too many men who are doing just like this in other homes around town. If we actually tried to arrest them all, we wouldn't be able to do any real police work. And, frankly, the costs of doing so are so high that you would be shocked by how it would impact your property taxes." "Well, then," the rebuked woman replied, "what would you suggest I do?" "Yo sugeriría que se aprende a hablar español." (Translation: "I suggest you learn to speak Spanish" MORAL: Claro, usted puede optar por aprender a hablar español , pero si no se va a asegurar sus fronteras , es probable que tenga que aprender a hablar español. (Translation: Sure, you can choose to learn to speak Spanish, but if you are not going to secure your borders, you will likely have to learn to speak Spanish.)

Liberty Founders on a Mound of Entertainments and Distractions

The Constitution is more than one document at the same time. It is a plan of government, writ at a high level of generality. It is a donation of authority by the States and the People to create that government.

It is, as well, a barrier to excesses by that government, a barrier that operates at two levels. It reserves unenumerated powers to the States and the to the People. It provides so-called "checks and balances" between the parts of the federal government.

But the Constitution is no more the government than a blue print is a house.

But if a house is to be built, the blueprint must be honored. By honored, I mean only that the craftsmen follow the measures and designs, the construction materials lists, and assemble the product as proposed in the elevations and drawings.

If the federal government envisioned by the Framers and Ratifiers of the Constitution is to come into existence, then it too must be honored by the craftsmen that follow. 

The difference here is that the craftsmen are office holders and their lawful designees, individuals that alone or by groups wield powers that are categorized as either legislative (the making of law), executive (the enforcing of law), or judicial (the evaluation of the enforcement of law). What has actually happened with our national government, however, has been the governmental equivalent of carpenters, masons, plumbers, and electricians "ad libbing" their efforts rather than following the blue print.

Some examples illustrate my meaning.

Take Thomas Jefferson, whose basic philosophy was very like that of Antonin Scalia. He viewed the security of the liberties of the People as dependent on a Constitution of fixed, determined meaning, what Scalia referred to as the "hide-bound" Constitution. Still, the Chief Executive of a young Nation, Jefferson sees a swath of desirable territory that lately is available. Now the expansion of the national boundaries of the nation, drawing within its border the considerable natural resources there located, is a good. But it is a good the accomplishment of which, at a minimum, required the advise and consent of the Senate (as to a treaty for purchase), and the appropriation of necessary funds by the entire Congress. Jefferson follows the age old adage that it is better to ask forgiveness than permission and negotiates the Louisiana Purchase.

Or take the Federalists. Upon ratification of the Constitution and the standing up of the national government, the Federalists had the Congress and the White House. They had populated the new judicial system with federalist judges. They sought to coalesce their control of the country by limiting dissent. To do so, they enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts clearly violated the prohibition stated in the First Amendment that Congress shall make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech. Yet they did just that.

Military adventurism without a formal declaration of war, in my lifetime includes Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, among others. Others went before. There is NO CONSTITUTIONAL JUSTIFICATION for a President to conduct war against another nation in the absence of a declaration of war, yet it is done all the time. 

For that matter, the myriad, hundreds of thousands, of pages of federal regulations reflect Congress allowing executive branch agencies to impose regulations like the Executive Branch had law making authority. Moreover, the enforcement mechanisms by which such agencies conduct hearing on rule violations smack of judicial adventurism by the Executive.

Ultimately, there is this terrible, hopeful monster of excursions, excesses, and entropies, by which we are now MASTERED.

You may not think about these things much. When I think about them, I sometimes wonder if things are now as they are because too few anymore care to know the meaning of the Constitution or to discipline the agents of the government for their violations of it.

Normally I'm a PC, Today, I'm An Apple!

(In which we learn that our labor belongs alone to ourselves, that a collective lacks moral authority to demand that we produce for them, and that they lack the moral authority to demand that we create that which we have not, ourselves, chosen to create.)

Consider a scenario:

The Bureau of Prisons publishes an invitation for bids to construct a prison. ACME Builders places the winning bid. ACME completes construction on, or just ahead of schedule. The new facility opens on time. The federal government places several hundred convicted prisoners in the facility. 

A few years into operation, the Bureau realizes that, had it thought to do so, it would have designed the Prison’s medical wing to have a negative pressure air system, with filtration, so that risk of transmitting infections within the wing would be reduced. 

The cost of reverse engineering and installing the system is estimated at 5 Million Dollars. 

Rather than publishing another invitation to bid, the Bureau of Prisons goes to court. It sues to coerce ACME Builders to provide the reverse engineering and installation of negative air pressure systems. ACME does not currently provide that service on any other contracts in its portfolio. 

A federal court orders ACME to create a plan for the reverse engineering of the medical wing, and installation of the negative air system with filtration. 

Rather than comply with the court’s order, ACME goes public with what has happened. 

Some who learn of what has happened agree with the court’s order.  

After all, why shouldn’t ACME be made to do this job? They had the benefit of the contract, and with any insight, they could have foreseen that the omission of this feature would risk greater medical costs for the Bureau as it cares for the prisoners under their charge. 

Some who learn of the court order cheer ACME for its defiance and refusal of the court order.  

Compelling a company to invent something it hasn’t invented, build something it hasn’t built, give away its valuable professional and trades services, all these things strike at personal autonomy and individual liberty.

Of course, I'm not actually addressing a dispute between the Bureau of Prisons and ACME. 

Instead, in this post, I am addressing the federal government's decision to coerce a private company, Apple, Inc., to create a non-existent operating system and provide that system for use by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to unlock an iPhone found among the possessions of the deceased San Bernardino Islamic terrorists.

The FBI wants to obtain access to information on the iPhone. The encryption of the phone, designed by Apple, Inc., is preventing the FBI from gaining access to that information. The US Attorney's Office in California filed a request (a motion) for a court Order compelling Apple, Inc. to cooperate in their investigation. The US Attorney based its request on an ancient (relatively speaking) statute, the All Writs Act. There are relatively few decisions of the Supreme Court on the application of the All Writs Act, and no decisions in which a similar Order was sought and granted.

The US Attorney submitted a legal memorandum with the request for the Order. Motions are, typically, supported by legal arguments in that way. In this case, the Government argued that forcing Apple, Inc., to cooperate with its investigation was indistinguishable from other, previous court orders. In particular, the Government claimed that a prior Supreme Court decision forcing a telephone company to cooperate with a criminal investigation into an illegal book-making operation -- an Order that forced the phone company to install a "pen register" on a criminal suspect's telephone -- was analogous and justified the requested Order.

But, and an appeals court and probably the Supreme Court will have to decide whether forcing a phone designer and a computer programming company to craft an all new program that does not currently exist actually is analogous to installing a pen register. Remember, a pen register was a technology already in existence at the time that the Supreme Court upheld an Order compelling the installation of that particular device in that particular investigation. The lower court concluded, and the Supreme Court agreed, that little to no additional effort or inconvenience resulted to the telephone company from being forced to cooperate with the investigation. So the question remains, is forcing a company to write a new program that does not currently exist result in unreasonable inconvenience and harm to the company.

Here's exactly what the Government wants from Apple, Inc.:

The answer seems obvious.

Coding is labor. Labor costs money. Creation takes thought and design, testing to insure that the coding does as required. Sure, the iOS system from Apple is different from the old Fortran and COBAL programming I did thirty years ago. But the basic principle of logic and commands does not change. The creation of such a program and its attempted use by the FBI, if it resulted in permanent loss of the information that may be on the phone requires care, thought, work. It is not the mere attachment of a pen register.

The Government's motion was decided by a magistrate. That magistrate struck out the word, "Proposed," at the top of the Government's proposed order, and signed it as filed. The order compels Apple to devise a program that would allow the FBI to gain access to that information. 

Apple posted an open letter to Apple users on its website, advising them of the issue and of their response. You can read that message here.

Apple's Tim Cook goes on to explain the problems with the FBI's request and the Magistrate's Order:

We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone. 

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

Now, at this point, maybe you disagree with my decision to salute Apple for refusing to cooperate with the FBI-won court order.

You may take the view that it is Apple's and Cook's duty to cooperate in the matter and make recovery of information from that iPhone possible.

Past decisions of the Supreme Court sustaining plainly unconstitutional actions of the federal government -- the creation of internment camps for Japanese Americans, for example -- have always been justified by the claim, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." That, of course, expresses the Court's decision, and the Government's argument in such cases, that if the Government were compelled to comply with the Constitution's requirements, it would put the Nation in too great danger.

While that is quite possibly true, I am not alone in concluding that there is a deformation of our character as a freedom-loving Nation to tolerate disregard of the boundaries of the Constitution by the government. We have allowed large deformations -- imprisoning Americans because their ancestors were Japanese -- and smaller ones -- compelling a company to assist the FBI in jail-breaking the iPhone of a deceased Muslim terrorist. The question is just how comfortable we will allow ourselves to become with the Government beginning every action with an assumption that the boundaries of the Constitution exist to entertain the masses with thrilling stories of the glory of America, but not to restrain their actions.

The Engrossed Resolution Proposing the XIIIth Amendment

So now we have an Order compelling Apple, Inc., to create something it has not previously created. Is there a word in the English language for a condition in which the law permits one person to coerce the labor of another? (Oddly, many who, like me, are disturbed by the Court Order here are perfectly fine with compelling Christian bakers that have never made same sex marriage cakes to begin to do so, or to lose their businesses. Their hypocrisy on such compulsions doesn't stop me from recognizing this wrong and that wrong.)

I'll give you a minute to think on it what word is used to described to force labor from another.

You know the word.  

You probably think it reeks of histrionics to invoke the word here. 

Yes, the word is, Slavery. Coercion of the labor of another is slavery.

So, I start by objecting to the idiot order of an idiot federal magistrate judge in California because I object to coercion of labor from others.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation could get the same outcome by letting out a bid for a programmer to design a program like it needs here. (Literally in just the moments that passed after writing those words, I saw a headline online that John McAfee, antivirus pioneer and Libertarian Party candidate for the Presidency, had announced that he would decrypt the iPhone and could do so within three weeks.) Instead, having failed to crack the security of the phone at issue here, the FBI and the Office of the US Attorney applied for an Order compelling Apple to invent a new program allowing the cracking of the security on the phone.

Fourth Amendment

Beyond the direct coercion of the labor of another – a form of slavery – there is the entire issue that the program the FBI wants and the Court has ordered Apple to create is capable of being taken from the current investigation to other uses.

Imagine that the FBI possessed a Bluetooth enabled decryption device capable of invading your iPhone (or, for that matter, your Android phone). Walking down the road, hurting no one, having committed no criminal offense, you have no idea that the FBI just swept your phone, using Bluetooth technology and a backdoor program created by Apple because of an order issued by some federal magistrate (not even a real district court judge).

Of course, some folks will instantly say, "what are you afraid of, if you have nothing to hide?"

What I am afraid of, friends, is living in a collective where the love of liberty has not merely faded to a warm ember, but has gone right cold.

The "needs of the Nation" do not justify the violation of rights of life, of liberty, and of property. The Fourth Amendment prohibits invasion of the rights of property and personal physical integrity in the absence of a judicial search warrant based on probable cause to suspect criminal violation of the law. State constitutional warrant requirements likewise prohibit warrantless searches. But why do these provisions interpose to prevent warrantless rooting about in the private property of citizens?

There is a history to this Nation.

Understanding that history enables a considered discussion of the problem with this Order.

Under the rule of the Crown and Parliament, individuals could be pressed into service to the Crown without compensation. One example of that was the quartering of troops in homes. It was the colonial revulsion to quartering of the very troops that would oppress their liberties as Englishmen that led to the Third Amendment's prohibition on nonconsensual quartering of troops in homes during times of peace, and in times times of war except as provided for by law. General warrants are another example out of our history, in which the Crown's courts issued warrants that were not supported by sworn evidence and did not provide express descriptions of places and people to be searched, and things to be seized.

We revolted from England over these kinds of abuses. We drew careful constrictions around our governments, in the States' and federal Constitutions. I view this Order as a direct intrusion on those rights and liberties.

Liberty seldom dies on the field of battle. So much more often, liberty expires while watching television, playing Call of Duty, gardening, crocheting, or picking the kids up from soccer practice. Nothing wrong with TV, COD, gardening, crocheting, or parenting, but when diligence is dulled, liberty is lost.

Why Do You People Keep Talking About The Constitution?

"Why do you people keep talking about the Constitution?"

In a recent comment on social media, my brother told me that someone threw that question at him.

Why do we keep talking about the Constitution? 

I'll answer your question with a question: 

Why do you people keep ignoring the Constitution?

Allow me to be clear about my notions.

God created man, the mind of man, the heart of man, to live in a perfect liberty resulting from relation with Him. You may not be a Christian, or the adherent of the many other faiths that adopt this view. But if you live in the United States, you live in a Nation that has adopted that view in its principal founding document, the Declaration of Independence. 

In the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote, 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Even if you dispute the actuality of the Garden of Eden story, you must catch the underlying truth: while capable of great and good, we choose low and bad, too often, to justify a claim that my preferences (or yours) are good, better, or best.

So when we gather in groups, couple, family, neighborhood, community, city, county, State, Nation, international treaty association, we really just are a collection of folks too often inclined away from the good, away from the great.

It's a truism. It isn't proof of perfect evil in every choice of every person.

It is sufficiently true that you should NOT trust your life, your liberty, your family, your future, to MY goodness and MY judgment.

Now my anarchically inclined friends see this part. That collectivism is just a way of describing group bullying. They reject all involuntary collectives and their authority, for, among others, this reason.

Those, like me, who have not fully made the leap to anarchy, have to find a method of preserving and/or pursuing the rights we claim to be ours innately, as an aspect of our created Nature: rights to life, to liberty, to pursue happiness. In our Nation, the basic idea of how things are, the essence of them, is stated in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration is a sort of birth certificate for the Nation. It states the basis of our parentage and lineage. It states the causes of liberation and independence from England. And it asserts the philosophical underpinnings of this joint project: Natural Law.

On the other hand, the Constitution of the United States is not our birth certificate.

It doesn't state our identity as a people.

All that it does, and it does this well in principle, less well in fact, is to provide for a general government of 13, and then, ultimately, 50 sovereign States, and in doing so, to provide a set of highly constrained, limited lines of authority and restricted powers. That Constitution separates legislative powers (the Congress), executive powers (the President), and judicial powers (the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts).

Of course, the Bill of Rights, an important component of the Constitution were a demanded condition for support of the Constitution, because the States and the People feared the creation of an overarching, growing, and overwhelming leviathan in the federal government.

But still, this is what the Constitution constitutes: a framework for limited general government, respecting the retained powers and prerogatives of the States and of the People.

Now, why do we keep talking about the Constitution? And, why do you keep ignoring the Constitution?

Because the Constitution is, in fact, a straight jacket of federal power. It was designed to allow the monster of a federal government to be unleashed on the Nation, while restraining it in ways that would keep it in check and incapable of infringing the liberties and rights of the States and the People.

So we talk about the Constitution because we see the federal leviathan exceeding its bounds. And you ignore it because you prefer the seeming largess gained by that miscreantical behavior of that same leviathan.

Eighty years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States made a watershed switch, concluding that previously clearly understood limits on federal powers and federal interests had been misunderstood. In doing so, the Supreme Court unleashed the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act on the Nation, and then in subsequent cases found that virtually any program directed toward the general welfare proposed by the Congress and approved by the President had a sufficient nexus to the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce that it could be constitutionally justified.

So the rapacious hunger of the federal leviathan found a growing network of fans and lovers, folks that found that what the People would not do for them, what the States would not do for them, an errant Congress and an unbridled Court could inflict on them.

This dispute and contention is as real today and as recent as the horrible and unfounded idiocies penned by John Roberts when he saved Obamacare from constitutional challenges.

Want us to stop talking about the Constitution?

How about this?

Get your wants, needs, desires INSIDE the bounds of your own power to provide for them. Don't demand that your neighbor, or your neighboring State to give to you. Tamp down the adventurism of the overpowering federal government.

When the federal beast is reduced to a federal Chihuahua, we'll hold our peace.

Betwixt the Mirage and Hades: Does Voting Matter

“What difference, at this point, does it make?”

We will elect a new president, a new Congress, and many state and local government officers in less than 10 months. Having actively participated in the political life of our Nation through voting and advocacy for four decades, I am growing less and less sanguine about the prospect that political participation suffices to accomplish positive change.

Frankly, I am strongly tempted, particularly whenever the Republican Congress recedes from the field of battle with the current president as though it were the ninety pound weakling, rather than the other way around, I have that refrain constantly in my head: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Among my anarchist friends, the entire electoral enterprise is an exercise in self-delusion and oppression. It is an exercise in self-delusion, as they see it, because the outcome of the process makes no improvement. Oppression, because, after all, why should the choices of some collective group strip those outside the group of rights and liberties.

That latter point explains the near anarchy of many libertarians. My libertarian friends view the binary nature of American electoral processes as a deceptive construct of left-vs-right, deceptive because it ignores the more substantive binary of individual liberty versus statist authority.

For conscientious individuals, elections certainly force larger questions than whether to vote for the candidate who sweats less on camera or the candidate that doesn’t recall or even know the name of the head of the government of Uzbekistan. I have to continually evaluate what 40 years of civic participation has accomplished. Candidly, I am often tempted to conclude that I have pursued a mirage in the Republican Party.

The idea of supporting Democratic Party candidates is beyond admission: that party’s devotion to the unfettered right to abort children in utero prevents me, in conscience, to consider their candidates. With a few notable examples to the contrary, working to elect Republican candidates as a method of accomplishing substantial change has been a fool’s errand.

There are exceptions.

In 1980, I supported the election of John East as North Carolina’s junior senator. He joined the Senate during a Republican ascendancy there. Ronald Reagan, a Republican, took the White House. The Republican ascendancy resulted from the investment of committed grassroots activists. Folks expressed their deep, passionate concern over legalized abortion and other issues by turning off the TV and doing the hard work of political campaigning.

I know.

I was one of those folks. My mother and I got a copy of the voter rolls for Onslow County, North Carolina. We reviewed the county’s election records, including addresses, telephone numbers, and voting histories. All that effort was preparation for our ground campaign, a telephone campaign here in Onslow County. That campaign was educational and motivational in nature. It was designed to produce a reliably pro-life turnout at the polls. John East’s election was an effect of the serious effort of folks like us.

Supporting John East was no mistake.

True to his word, he took Senate responsibility for a legislative approach to overturning Roe versus Wade. In Roe, the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in the United States.  Importantly, the Court asserted that it lacked legal competence to answer the question “when does human life begin?” Presumably, the Court offered that description of the limits of its power as justification for its ultimate conclusion that States had wrongly claimed an interest in the life of an unborn child. After all, if the Court could not determine that a child in the womb – at any early stage of development – was human and alive, it could readily dismiss a State’s interest in protecting such lives by law.

Senator East orchestrated the Senate Judiciary Committee’s consideration of the Human Life Bill, Senate Bill 258. The Human Life Bill grew out of Steven Galebach’s analysis of the Roe Court’s disclaimer of competence to decide such questions. Galebach argued that the key question – whether a human child’s life is at stake in abortion – was capable of being answered.

For Galebach, the refrains from pro-abortion advocates – telling Roe’s opponents that the only resort left to them to overturn Roe was the ponderous and difficult task of amending the Constitution – rang hollow. With the Supreme Court’s declared incompetence to answer the question of when human life begins, Galebach proposed that Congress had the competence to examine the issue, that best scientific evidence and medical evidence proved that a unique human being came into existence, was alive, at conception. From such a conclusion, made by Congress fully within the bounds of its legislative competence, Galebach envisioned that a legal challenge would bring the matter back to the Supreme Court. In such a case, Galebach postulated that the Court would defer to the legislative fact-finding by Congress.

Senator East’s proposal, Senate Bill 258, embodied Galebach’s ideas.

Of course, Senators and Congressmen do not necessarily possess special knowledge or training positioning them to resolve questions addressed by Biology and the medical sciences. So the Senate Judiciary committee, to which Senate Bill 258 was assigned, scheduled legislative hearings to assemble and assess the science on these questions.

If you did not live through the time, the high drama, political hijinks, and general shenanigans have been lost to you until now.

As to the biological and medical sciences a long a growing body of evidence fully supported a factual conclusion that a distinct, living human entity comes into existence at conception. Building a legislative fact-finding record for that conclusion – from the testimony of recognized experts in human genetics, embryology, and fetology – was simplicity itself. Here are some brief excerpts from testimony submitted to the Senate Committee:

“I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception…. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life…. I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty…is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.”

Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania. 

“[A]fter fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. ... [This] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion, ... not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence. ... Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.” 

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris. 

“By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”

Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic. 

“It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive…. It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception…. Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data.” 

Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School. 

“The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals.” 

Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School.

Frankly, the entire Nation ought to have fallen under a kind of cognitive dissonance that such clear, undisputed science existed proving the vital humanity of the unborn offspring of human beings while, at the same time, the Nation’s highest Court offered its own incompetence to answer the question at the heart of a State’s asserted interest in the life of an unborn child.

Once the Judiciary Committee unveiled its juggernaut of genetic, medical, and scientific testimony and evidence, an outcry arose from elements in the legal and medical academic communities. The effect of that outcry was to push to recast the essential question raised by the Human Life Bill from a fact-based one answerable by science and medicine to a metaphysical, philosophical one. Doing so successfully would have simply positioned a contentious issue with a fairly obvious answer as an intractable one. In turn, that intractability would secure the status quo: legalized abortion on demand.

A hue and cry erupted with the Senate hearings on Senate Bill 258. The record was held open for the addition of opposition statements. An odd juxtaposition became evident.

Pro Roe v. Wade activists, the kind of folks that invented the chant, “keep your rosaries off my ovaries” insisted that opposition to abortion was rooted in religious belief. Rather than frankly acknowledging the uncontradicted science, they focused their rhetoric on the theological and philosophical questions of life. The worst of that approach came from the situational ethics of Peter Singer. (Notoriously, Singer also argued that no child should be conceded to be alive until a sufficient time had passed after birth to allow screening for genetic anomalies and defects.)

On the opposing side, anti-Roe activists, for many of whom an undeniable religious component compelled their conscientious opposition to abortion, focused their rhetoric on the basic facts of science and medicine. For them, for me, opposition to abortion might embody a precept of religious conscience but was warranted entirely on the genetic and scientific fact that, from conception, each life is distinct from its mother, biologically alive, and genetically human.

Howard Baker, Republican Senator from Tennessee, thrust himself into this maelstrom of contention. While the logical, factual, and rhetorical bases for Senate Bill 258 plainly supported the push for action, Baker brought the effort to a dead stop. Rather than chiding the science-contrarians, Baker turned on the social conservatives. Me and millions of others like me. Baker barked that “social issues” had to be set aside. The “important” issues of the economy have to take precedence in the Senate’s business.

A decade later, no substantial action had come from the Senate on the central constitutional questions related to abortion. What we did get was the confirmation of a checkered lot of judges and Supreme Court justices, including Sandra O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. The O’Connor – Kennedy – Souter triumvirate joined together in a in a notorious tripartite opinion reaffirming the central holding of Roe that the Constitution guarantees, as an aspect of liberty, a woman’s choice to abort a pregnancy.

In an unfortunate irony, that reaffirmation of Roe came at the same moment that another politician rose to the presidency on the mantra, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Bill Clinton’s catchphrase was that Democrat’s indictment of the failure of the Baker doctrine that deferred treatment of social issues until America’s soft economy was reinvigorated.

(Absolute fairness requires that I acknowledge a few legislative initiatives on the subject of abortion. There were two principal ones. First, the Hyde Amendment prevented federal funding of abortions. Second, an amendment to Title X family planning funding required that private family planning providers participating in that funding program sequester federally funded programs for family planning from any program they also conducted that provided referrals for, or provided abortion services.)

Over 35 years have passed since North Carolinians elected John East to the Senate. An entire generation of time has passed. Deferring substantial action on “social issues,” under the Baker diktat, meant that no opportunity for an up–or–down vote had has been had on an amendment to the Constitution overturning the Supreme Court’s extra-constitutional adventurism.

By failing to confront the Court’s overreach, the Congress likely shares responsibility for other brazen excesses by the Court, such as its usurpation of the right of the States to provide a framework for marriage based on traditional heterosexual models. As with Roe, the Obergefell decision does not constitute an earnest search for history or meaning by the justices. As with Roe, it is only the stated preferences of the Court’s majority, gussied up in black robes.

A vigorous Congress, fully occupying its role, could well tame the Supreme Court’s excesses. Examples from history suggest as much. A few here will suffice.

In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt and the Congress attempted to use several public benefit programs to address the impact of the depression on the Nation’s economy. Those programs – embodying Keynesian notions that a recovery could be best fueled by government programs of employment, construction, and the like – were keystones of the recovery programs adopted by the “political” branches of the federal government. In a series of cases, however the Supreme Court struck down eight of the programs, including the National Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

Roosevelt took the decisions personally.

Rather than considering the possibility court had correctly construed constitutional limits on his power, Franklin went on the attack. He suggested that advanced age of certain justices explain their decisions. As a solution, on February 5, 1937, Roosevelt proposed his “court packing” plan.

Roosevelt’s court packing plan would have increased the number of slots for justices on the Supreme Court. Enlarging the Court would allow Roosevelt and a sympathetic Senate to populate the court with new justices allowing Roosevelt to construct a new court paradigm sympathetic to his programs.

Thomas Jefferson famously complained of the difficulty in making substantial changes where the courts of the nation had been packed with the nominees of the Federalist governments that preceded his in a letter to Judge Spencer Roane, he spoke of the “revolution of 1800” was stymied by judges holding lifetime appointments.

Franklin’s plan set aside any pretense that justices of the Supreme Court were apolitical. That pretense crashed hard on the rocks of his proposal. Everyone knew that Roosevelt’s justice nominees would be screened for their views on the Constitution and on the authority of the political branches to adopt the kinds of economic programs the court had struck down.

Roosevelt’s attack on the Court succeeded. Just two months later, before legislation enlarging the Court could be passed by the Congress, two of the Court’s justices made a startling about face on their constitutional philosophy, and in cases addressing the constitutionality of the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act, a new, narrow majority of the Court upheld the constitutionality of these federal programs. As a result of that concession, the Congress turned away from the court packing plan, the Senate defeating the plan by a nearly 4-1 majority.

Another brief, but obvious, example of Congress -- and the Nation -- upbraiding the Supreme Court is found in the propounding of and ratifying of the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution. Prior to the Civil War, the Nation had lived under the uneasy truce called the Missouri compromise for three decades. That legislative agreement had fostered westward expansion, balanced admission of slave and free states, and had pushed the contentious issues of human slavery down the road.

In Dred Scott vs Sanford, the Supreme Court struck down the Missouri compromise. The Court held that Scott, as a black man, was not a person under the Constitution. As a consequence, in the courts view, Scott lacked the capacity to sue or be sued in the courts of the United States. Half-million lives and $80 billion in war costs later, the Nation rejected slavery through the 13^th amendment, granted citizenship status and rights of due process and equal protection to blacks through the 14^th amendment, and extended the elective franchise to them through the 15^th amendment.

Other examples exist, including the impact of the Congressional Watergate investigation on the Nixonian presidency, the impact of the Iran Contra investigation on the second term of Ronald Reagan, and the impact of the Whitewater investigation and impeachment on Bill Clinton’s second term. In each of these cases, Congress rose up in its constitutional role of oversight of the Executive Branch to turn back what it perceived either as possible criminal conduct (Nixon, Clinton) or extra-constitutional adventures.

I’m sure you each have your own thoughts on civic participation at its value in securing or rearranging societal constructs such as marriage and personal rights such as the right to life.

Do not misunderstand me.

I am not abandoning civic dissipation. I merely acknowledge a failure of expectations. Working for, voting for, the election of candidates because of their affiliation with the Republican Party has not induced that radical reconstruction of our society as a constitutional Republic of limited powers as I had hoped. Nor has it reinvigorated the keen devotion to the primacy of liberty that that indomitable commitment that was best expressed by Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Bernie Sanders, Adolph Hitler, and Other Democratic Socialists

I understand you are planning to vote for Bernie Sanders.

It is free country, and you have the right to vote for him. I am grateful to live in a country were we actually have a choice when we go to the ballot box. There are many countries where that option doesn't exist.

Did you realize that?

That there are countries were the head of government places his/her name on the ballot, no competition, and still conducts an election. Of course, in such countries, voting is actually often MANDATORY. The result? The head of government receives overwhelming ballot box support. 80% 90% support!

Now these countries have many things in common.

For example, in most of them, the government owns everything and decides how everything will be used.

The government decides how much toilet paper will be produced, what car comes off the factory line (assuming the country is large enough to have an automotive industry).

The government makes intimately personal decisions too. What you will study if you go to university ("we need engineers, you look like an engineer, you will study engineering"), what career you will pursue ("we need sanitary landfill heavy equipment operators, you look like a sanitary landfill heavy equipment operator, you will be a sanitary landfill heavy equipment operator").

The government allocates resources according to its perception of needs. Perhaps you are accustomed to the quaint American practice of wiping your derriere with toilet paper after defecating? The government needs paper for documents of the government, and the odd American practice of butt-wiping has reduced available resources. Many people around the world wipe their butts, after defecating, WITH THEIR HAND. In a government that controls resources and their allocation, toilet paper can be made into an unobtainable luxury. (Ask the people of Venezuela.)

The government finds that too many people are becoming a vexatious burden and disposes of them. Kim Jong Un actually had his uncle taken out to a bombing range, had him forced to stand on a marked spot, and had a bomb literally dropped on him. Excessive, right? Many governments engage in similar acts of culling of the population. Another country forcibly aborts any child after parents have their first live birth.

The government limits the ability to depart from these happy lands. They restrict access to international traveling papers (passports, exit visas). They restrict access of outsiders (foreigners) to the people.

These countries all have something in common. They are modeled on various forms of a political and economic idea of socialism. On the hard left of socialism, bizarre leftist nutcases like Kim Jong Un and the Peoples Republic of China mark the dismal distance that can be traveled in the quest to disentangle the human heart from the love of individual liberty and autonomy. On the far right of socialism, we have the friendly socialism of countries like France, England, Canada, and, yes, the United States. Oh, don't forget Nazi Germany.

Now, you go ahead and vote for Bernie.

He's a tired, tiresome, old fart, who has never worked an honest day's work since college. He free-loads, first as a Congressman, now as a Senator and Presidential candidate. He is the only declared, elected member of Congress of the Socialist Workers Party.

You want free stuff.

I get that.

Lord knows, I'd love some free stuff too.

But the God's honest truth is that what he is offering you ISN'T free, except in the same way that a TV stolen from a business during the Ferguson riots is free. Yes, there is no difference from stealing during a riot (mob-based theft) and stealing by electing a man to government office who is planning to have the government take property, possession, and funds from others.

So, go ahead, vote for Bernie. It helps in the primary election because it exposes serious weaknesses of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But here's a head's up for what a Sanders presidency would look like:

He is an incompetent buffoon who does not understand how economic principles operate. So he will try to do things like he's promised you. Things like taxing your father's salary massively (yes, your dad (or mom) (or both) to pay for your "free education" and your "free health care."

Of course, while sensible Democrats (if you can find them) and Republicans are controlling Congress he will be worse than incompetent buffoon. He will be an incompetent buffoon that can no more get legislation passed as President than he could as a member of Congress. (Look up how many bills for which he was the original sponsor actually passed both Houses and became law.)

Being stymied by a Congress that MAY possess marginally greater economic understanding than a man who, in his dotage, bitterly clings to a failed economic and social ideal (democratic socialism) doesn't mean he'd be unable to do anything. He does have the example of the current occupant of the White House, who, when he doesn't get a bill through Congress decides that he will undertake "executive action."

Odd words, "executive action." They are absent from the Constitution of the United States. There is, in the American Constitution, only one legitimate body for the MAKING OF LAW: the Congress. Yet the current president, himself an undeclared socialist, and your would-be president, a declared socialist, are in a grand tradition of socialists. That tradition is autocratic authoritarianism.

Bernie Sanders, a failed Congressman, a failed Senator. The producer of absolutely nothing. Nothing that you ever ate. Nothing that you ever drove. Nothing that you ever lived inside. Nothing that you ever sat on, slept on, wore. The creator of one known work of fiction, in which he details the imagined sexual fantasy of every woman, to be gang raped.

Yes, please. This is the exact president we need. The match to the fuse. The start of the Revolution. And you're voting for him because he is BUYING your vote with a promise HE CAN'T keep.

The prosperity of generations has eased the American love of liberty into slumber. In our dreams we have imagined that the government is a lovingly disposed parent. Yet true history, actual fact, dispels any truth to the benevolence of government.

The long train out of brutal serfdom has been a force march of stalwart folk that have refused to encourage the growth of power in central bodies, that have denied the "moral rightness" of theft by taxation, and that have called on the sterner, more hopeful beasts of human nature: love of liberty, despite of oppression, resourcefulness, and, frankly, enlightened self-interest.

So, go ahead.

After all, he is promising you "free" college.

After all, he is promising you "free" health care.

Why wouldn't you take his bribes? Why wouldn't you sell him your vote. Thankfully, your dream of a Sanders-led paradise can only do what every previous Socialist paradise has done:  fail.