New York has no authority to license ‘gay’ marriage

/0 Comments/in , /by

Abolition of the family! … The bourgeois family will disappear, in the course [of history] as its supplement [private property] disappears, and both will vanish with the destruction of capital. – The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

On July 25, 2011, MSNBC and the other undereducated, misinformed and politicized news media proclaimed, “N.Y. becomes sixth and largest state to legalize gay marriage.” Of course, this is the same group of fellow travelers and useful idiots who misapply the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the respective states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” to deny Christians and soon Jews the freedom of worship, when the clause plainly recognizes the inalienable freedom of worship.

Either of these distortions of real truth is more of the same Marxist double speak. The New York state government has no authority to legalize homosexual marriage, whether the government was conscious of the Marxist thrust of its illegal actions or just being a useful idiot in the advance of Marx’s goal to destroy the family.

Pages could be, have been and should be written about the progressive Marxist destruction of the American constitutional republic. And pages could be, have been and should be written about the destructive nature of the homosexualization of the culture. With regard to the illegal action of the New York state government, it is more important to understand clearly that the civil government has no authority in area of the free exercise of religion such as marriage. If it has no authority and tries to exercise power not vested to it, then the state is acting illegally.

So that you don’t buy the lie, this commentary focuses on the fact that, intentionally or not, too many in the press, the mass media, the government and the education establishment have confused the citizens of America about the institution of marriage.

First of all, as many of our readers already know, there are many forms of government. In our western democracy, there are at least four spheres of government: individual government, family government, ecclesiastical government and civil government. In the United States of America, the civil government owes its existence to the consent of the governed, not the other way around, in the tradition of the Magna Carta. Furthermore, since the Rev. Samuel Rutherford wrote “Lex, Rex,” which clarified the rule of law posited by the Magna Carta, all of these forms of government have been under God’s law in the United Kingdom and the United States. When king or ruler is above the law, he often acts in imperious and dictatorial ways, for the very nature of power is to corrupt the powerful, unless it is restrained by God’s law. In essence, God’s law says to love your neighbor as yourself, and the civil government is subject to that divine law.

 

Thus, the Declaration of Independence made it clear that King George III acted illegally when he oppressed the American colonies, because he was under the law of God. Countries that allowed men to rule above the law have produced tyrants such as Stalin, Hitler and Mao Tse-tung. Current examples include Mugabe, Chavez and the military junta in Burma, among many others.

It must be emphasized that marriage between one man and one woman is a God-ordained, God-defined, biblical act. For 1,800 years in western countries, marriage was a unique institution, initiated by God when he created the male and female, presided over by Jesus Christ when he blessed the act of marriage and stated that a man and a woman would leave their parents and join together to become one flesh and sustained by the Holy Spirit, which not only holds the marriage together but also produces the offspring that God creates.

The norm in most other religions is not monogamy, although many have borrowed the form of a Christian wedding. Moreover, the state’s involvement in Christian marriage is relatively recent.

In 1837, Rev. Henry Morris complained that the state had usurped the authority of God in marriage. Morris railed against the passage of a law on marriage by providing a detailed look at the institution of marriage. He painstakingly interpreted the scriptures to establish his point that marriage is most importantly a religious institution, and therefore it should not be relegated to a strictly civil character:

They took from the Clergy “the solemnizing of Matrimony, and put it into the hands of Justices of the Peace …” In the former instance of this desecration being ordained, the power to legislate had been seized by those who would be restrained in nothing that they imagined to do; and, in a day specified in their ordinance, “no other marriage whatsoever within the Commonwealth,” but such as should be contracted … before a Justice of the Peace, “should be held or accounted a marriage according to the law of England.” But the national principle is not yet sufficiently prostrated to make us again ripe for so arbitrary and irreligious an imposition, and therefore, by the law just come in force, you are left to form your own judgments, whether marriage is a mere civil contract, or a Divine institution “whether it shall be celebrated with or without any offices of religion” whether the Church, the Conventicle, or the Register-office, shall be the place of celebration and whether the Clergyman of the Parish, the Dissenting Teacher, or the superintendent Registrar, shall officiate on the occasion.

Morris adds that the biblical position is that only God ordains marriage. So, in the light of history and God’s Word written, the judges in Massachusetts, California or any other state or federal court have nothing to say about Christian marriage and have no authority to define, ordain or desecrate it.

Morris brilliantly continues in his sermon:

“… by the state of matrimony the spiritual marriage that is betwixt Christ and His Church is signified and represented … But that ‘the fruitful vine’ … is not procurable by a civil contract, it cometh only of the Lord.”

His reasoning is impeccable, but many have forgotten that marriage belongs to the church. In fact, a few are very uncomfortable with that concept because of the abuse of power by some ecclesiastical authorities. Two wrongs don’t make a right, however. And they certainly don’t make a civil right to same-sex “marriage.”

With regard to the abuse of power, it must be noted that civil government is good, although there can be bad presidents, governors, judges and other authorities. Family government is good, although there can be bad fathers and mothers. Ecclesiastical government is good, although there can be bad clergymen. The rules and the laws of the exception do not make the rule. In other words, a bad father does not give us the license to call for the abolishment of fatherhood, etc. What it does do is to give us the opportunity for checks and balances, which until recently were most perfectly expressed in our constitutional government.

The church has to reclaim marriage as its unique institution. Whatever anyone wants to do outside of the church may be their business, but it is not sanctioned by God’s law. The state has the right to regulate only what the Constitution allows it to regulate, because there is no liberty for license. But, the state does not have the right to tell the church that any couple outside of the faith is married.

We need to stand for God’s law in the face of the power grab by those in civil authority who know no restraints.

New York and the other increasingly socialized states have not only violated God’s law, they have also violated their own Constitution and the will of the governed. When they do that, they are just like King George. They have abdicated their moral and legal authority and are subject to indictment, trial and just punishment.

Now, all those who freely exercise their inalienable right to religious faith must stop acting like useful idiots and fellow travelers by going along to get along. Instead, they must stand for their God-given rights by proclaiming loud and clear that these New York government servants have crossed the line into illegal activity that has no authority and makes them criminals.

Often, people of faith and values do not stand up because they have been slowly boiled in the brine of socialism and so give the states powers they have no authority to use. Often the state or federal government creates the problem by violating our individual rights to property, estates, income, etc., through the Marxist device of illicit taxation. Then the government argues that the state needs to govern marriage to alleviate the tax burdens the state created so that it can encourage marriage. Such circular and dishonest reasoning has almost deceived the very electorate.

Now the people must throw off the stupor of Marxist doublespeak and return to the basic principles that made them free to live at peace in the American republic that recognizes “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The power to tax is the power to destroy. Do not let it destroy godly marriage and families!

11

Dr. Ted Baehr is the founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE, chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, and a well-known movie critic, educator, lecturer and media pundit. He also is the author of several books, including “The Culture-Wise Family” with legendary entertainer Pat Boone, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Study of Culture, Media, and Mass Entertainment at the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought. For more information, please call 800-899-6684 or go to the MOVIEGUIDE website.

This article was originally published at WND.com on June 27, 2011. The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

The Creeping Pink Cloud

/0 Comments/in , /by
Rupert Murdoch’s New York bullhorn, also known as the New York Post, has recently been jubilating each time a Republican in the state legislature comes over to the side of gay marriage. According to the Post, the legalization and celebration of gay marriage is only another step on the road to universal emancipation that has included mileposts such as the civil rights movement and women’s liberation. On June 15, the Post, casting aside the fig leaf of news reporting, produced an editorial called “New York Is Overdue to Say ‘I Do’ to Gay Marriage”:

The sum total of human liberty grows any time a single individual enjoys expanded freedom. So much the better when rights grow through popular consensus, as is likely with bipartisan legislative approval in Albany, rather than through activist judges.

Although some Neanderthals may object to this supposed expansion of freedom, the editorialist assures us not to worry:

The same principle, by the way, demands that religious institutions not be forced to perform marriages they don’t sanction. Their liberties, too, must be protected.

So there! We’ve expanded freedom once again while protecting the liberties of those who may have scruples about what the Post editorialist is rejoicing over. Not quite. Special protection for those thought to have been deprived of rights has come at the cost of those whose rights are being restricted. A gay rights or feminist bill invariably removes rights from people who are thought to be in violation of what some government agency demands. To give proof positive of accepting a newly protected lifestyle or group, an employer or renter will have to strain to show that he is not “discriminating.” Such a person will be expected to lean over backward as evidence of good intentions. In practice, this translates to mandatory favoring of those who are being specially protected.

“What about individuals who for religious or moral reasons find themselves repelled by gay marriage…or gay anything?”

“Discrimination” in these instances is being broadly interpreted to allow public administrators and judges to push dissenters into rethinking their basic values. In 1970 the IRS (with resounding media approval) denied tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist college in South Carolina—not because this institution kept blacks from attending, but because it discouraged interracial dating as a matter of religious principle. Such a policy, as Justice Rehnquist noted in a single dissenting opinion when the case came before the Supreme Court in 1983, did not contravene the existing law about the purpose of tax-exempt institutions. Bob Jones was stubbornly resisting the progressive thinking about race relations that civil rights laws were intended to produce. Religious conscience was made to take a backseat here to an evolving government policy aimed at altering attitudes.

It is also outrageously dishonest to pretend that religious dissenters will be protected with gay marriage’s legalization because churches will not—not yet—be forced to perform the offending ceremony. What about individuals who for religious or moral reasons find themselves repelled by gay marriage…or gay anything? Grant Havers, a Canadian professor and devout Protestant, has kept detailed evidence of government bullying that has been inflicted on his countrymen for failing to submit to what Robert Weissberg has called “coercive tolerance.”

By now, Havers’s dossier could fill entire library shelves. Although Canadian provinces and the Canadian federal government through its “human rights” purview have not explicitly compelled religious institutions to perform gay marriages, they have by no stretch of the imagination respected dissenters. In the 2001, Ontario evangelical printer Scott Brockie was fined so heavily as to ruin him financially. His crime was that he refused to print material for the Lesbian and Gay Archives. Brockie was found to be in violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code, which obviously was not mindful of his rights as a citizen.

In the relatively conservative province of Alberta, pastor Stephen Boissoin was ordered by a provincial Human Rights tribunal to renounce his views on homosexuality after publishing some disapproving remarks about gay unions. This case came three years after the same tribunal hauled before it the Catholic Archbishop of Calgary for expressing his disapproval of gay marriage. In both cases expensive appeal processes were begun. But while Archbishop Henry backed out of the imbroglio by issuing a “clarification,” Boissoin allowed his case to go all the way up to the highest appellate court in the province, the Queen’s Bench. There the appellant was relieved of the heavy fine that had been imposed by a lower court but not of the charge of having engaged in “hate speech.” This year, comedian Guy Earle was fined $15,000 for giving offense to a lesbian heckler during a routine in a Vancouver restaurant.

 

It is naïve to believe that First Amendment rights will be a permanent protection against such excesses. The US Department of Education, the Justice Department, and other federal and state agencies are already monitoring our words and demanding remedies for insensitive speech in educational institutions and in the workplace. (See my book After Liberalism, pp. 107-09.) The Canadian situation is not unimaginable, because public administrators and judges have already breached guarantees of free expression and free exercise of religion. But they have done this in corporate settings, applying government pressure to alter the values and mindsets of those associated with institutions instead of censoring isolated individuals’ views. It is also incorrect to imagine that the legalization of gay marriage in New York or in any other populous state will not significantly change the degree of control that is already being exercised over us because of existing anti-discrimination laws affecting gays.

The concerns of religious organizations that the “all but inevitable” passage of the gay-marriage bill will further limit their institutional freedoms are well-founded. Henceforth discrimination against gay spouses can and will be treated (however ludicrous this may seem) as an attack on the sacred institution of marriage.

It is equally questionable whether legislators any more than judges are legitimizing gay marriage because of a democratic “consensus.” If by consensus one means a settled, widely shared opinion, this is not what we’re talking about. True consensus, as opposed to fabricated public opinion, can only arise in real communities. It cannot be manufactured by the media and entertainment industries, but unfortunately these are the influences to which our under-thirties crowd has become increasingly susceptible. Factoring in the effect of public education, one has a complete picture of the supposed consensus being formed. The Still Divided Academy (a work by two of my young former colleagues, April Kelly-Woessner and Matthew Woessner) proves that most college freshmen have already been conditioned by the educational and entertainment establishments to embrace liberal social views. Adolescents happily accept that what they are made to believe is “liberal,” often with the illusion that they are choosing their own values.

Their parents may be compared to floating objects, located somewhere between fragmented communities and the world that their offspring inhabit. These middle-aged parents do not form a “consensus” but, like the kids, they can be persuaded (albeit more slowly) to accept what is fashionable. Obviously the media and universities have been working overtime to create a “consensus.”

Up until the 1970s, when I first noticed journalists and intellectuals pushing the incipient gay agenda, it is unlikely that people favored gay marriage any more than they endorsed legalized bestiality. After all, heterosexual unions are not a recent fad but the way hominoids have lived for the last million years. It may also be historically important that the “gay community” and their advocates are browbeating uncooperative businesses, law firms, and political figures. A Bronx Democrat and state senator, Ruben Diaz, says he has received numerous death threats since he publicly stated that he had reservations about voting for gay marriage. A writer for the Advocate, Jonathan Rauch, has warned his gay allies that the time has come to cool down. It may be necessary to “leave room for homophobia” now that his side is winning. Gays, explains Rauch, shouldn’t accommodate their reactionary critics by appearing to be “bullies.” To which one might reply: “Why not?” Bullying tactics have only helped them so far.

Given these forces it is not surprising that almost overnight a “consensus” has emerged in favor of gay lifestyles and gay unions. It was also predictable that this trend should be particularly popular among minicons, RINOs, and the more recognizable left. Perhaps we should now try to fashion a new “consensus” for unions between humans and chimps. Legislators and the Post could champion this project the way they have gay marriage. The government could then depict “chimpophobes” as the sworn enemies of freedom.

Paul_GottfriedDr. Paul Gottfried is IAI’s Distinguished Senior Fellow in Western Civilization and the History of Ideas.

This article was oiginally published at takimag.com on June 27, 2011.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

Harvest Time

/1 Comment/in , /by

The São Paulo Forum gathers together radical leftist political parties and criminal organizations, and it is making the socialist revolution in Latin America.

Given the accomplished fact of the downfall of the USSR, the São Paulo Forum has been the most powerful initiative for reorganizing the international Communist movement since 1990, and, in Fidel Castro’s words, “for reconquering in Latin America what was lost in Eastern Europe.” Convened by the Cuban dictator and the then Brazilian Workers’ Party’s presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Forum gathers together legal Communist (and pro-Communist) parties, committed to the struggle for cultural and political hegemony in their nations, and armed organizations involved in kidnapping, terrorism, and drug trafficking. Among the latter, the FARC, whose connections with the Brazilian drug market have been proved by the arrest of the Brazilian drug lord Fernandinho Beira-Mar, is a standout. There are also double-faced organizations, simultaneously legal and illegal, like the Chilean Communist Party, whose armed wing had something to do with the kidnapping of the Brazilian businessman Washington Olivetto.

Perhaps my readers will at first find strange a meeting in which legally organized parties fraternize with criminal gangs. But, actually, this association is just another application of the old Leninist rule that, in the revolutionary struggle, legal and illegal means should be combined together.

In fact one of the advantages of an international alliance is that it allows that a promiscuous mix of moralist rhetoric and drug trafficking, beautiful ideals and the brutality of kidnappings, humanitarian sentimentalism and organized terror (a mix so clear and evident on a continental scale, and in meetings of the Forum) appear disguised and nebulous when seen from the standpoint of each separate nation. That is to say, through the employment of Argentineans to take action in Mexico, Bolivians in Brazil, or Brazilians in Chile, the most obvious connections become invisible to the eyes of the local public opinion. As a result, the legal parties remain above any suspicion, and the mere suggestion that they should be investigated is rejected as an intolerable offense, even when the arrest of criminals gives full proof of the intimate connection between organized crime and leftist politics on the continent. And the criminal identity of the left becomes still more patent when the arrest of criminals is followed, by some magical coincidence, by a fast and effective mobilization of the left’s “decent” and official leadership in favor of the criminals under arrest.

The São Paulo Forum has been holding regular meetings since 1990. The tenth one took place in Havana, Cuba, in December 2001. Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was there. Therefore to deny that he is politically associated with the organizations that signed the declarations of the Forum is to deny the validity of a Brazilian presidential candidate’s signature on official documents of international relevance. As Vasconcelo Quadros wrote in the March 2002 issue of Isto É magazine: “Brazil shelters a clandestine network for supporting international guerrilla organizations which are involved in kidnappings, bank robberies, and drug trafficking.” In a country in which a phone call given to a swindler is enough to make a politician fall under police suspicion, the national refusal to investigate a criminal connection officially recorded on public documents is surprising at least.

What is even more surprising is that, among so many pundits, police officers, politicians, and military officials (all of them allegedly very intelligent), nobody can (or wants to) see a logical connection between those facts and Dr. Leonardo Boff’s statement, reported by the newspaper Jornal do Brasil of August 23, that with the coming election, “the time for the Brazilian revolution has arrived. The sowing has already been done. Now it is harvest time.” Or did the retired friar not mean anything of the sort when he used the word “revolution,” it being nothing but a naïve figure of speech? The massive and obstinate refusal to realistically face the present situation can be explained by the fact that this situation is indeed a dreadful reality, the sight of which would be far too traumatic for the delicate nerves of an effeminate bourgeoisie, a class terrified to the point of no longer acknowledging the reality of the evil that terrifies it.

Psychologically kidnapped by some nameless Marxism that has taken over the country, the ruling class is already ripe for performing its role of a docile, smiling, and helpful victim. But, please, do not think that with these remarks I here give my support or opposition to any of the candidates for the presidency. Consider this: the four candidates—the differences among them are irrelevant—have the same ideology, and any one of them, when elected, will not be able to rule the country without the support of at least one or two of the other three. From this point of view, then, the coming presidential election is actually a one-party election, in which the ruling party has been subdivided into four temporary tickets. That is why Dr. Boff did not say that the revolution will be inaugurated with the victory of this or that candidate, but with “the election” itself—it does not matter who will be the winner.

At least from the psychological point of view, that revolution has already begun: ideological uniformity, once accepted as the normal state of affairs in democratic politics, is enough to virtually outlaw, as “right-wing extremism,” any word henceforth said in favor of free-market capitalism, the United States of America, or Israel. And whoever says anything in favor of one them regularly receives death threats, some of which no longer even take precautions to be sent as anonymous messages: they are out there, for anyone to see, on internet sites and cause no scandal at all. Dr. Boff is right: the sowing has already been completed. It is harvest time.

But, of course, all of this is certainly a mere figure of speech. And to see any malign intention in such innocent words, that would be a scandal.

Olavo de Carvalho is the President of The Inter-American Institute, Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. This article was originally published in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo on Septemeber 7, 2015, and translated from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota.

 

 

 

Classroom Prostitution for Fun and Profit?

/0 Comments/in , /by
On March 4, Laurie Higgens, the dauntless director of Illinois Family Institute wrote, “The burnished legacy of Alfred Kinsey and his cultural progeny, the sexual revolutionaries of the ’60s, burns bright at Northwestern University.”

In “Gettin’ Freaky at Northwestern University,” Higgens was reporting on Northwestern University’s professor Michael Bailey, who has a rather gloomy history of luring vulnerable youth into college-credit peeping!

Bordello Bailey and his work were lauded in the 2006 volume of “The Best American Science Writing.” A major sexual-orientation researcher, Bailey is lionized by academe and the controlled media (he is sure homosexuality is largely inherited).

Bailey inspires students to advance the Kinsey sexuality canon.

On point, March 7, Joseph Bernstein proclaimed Bailey’s class “the best” he ever took (identifying the key problem of higher education).

Joe says, “J. Michael Bailey is the person at the center of the controversy currently burning on the western shore of Lake Michigan, fed by gusts of air from every prurient corner of the Internet and every red-faced moralist who can sit through the Fox News or MSNBC or CNN makeup chair long enough to release his outrage.”

As does this “red-faced moralist” object to Northwestern indoctrinating naive youths like Joe to praise prostitution, a direct form of sex trafficking. Before discussing Northwestern’s “voluntary” curriculum, note three definitions:

“Prostitution is the act or practice of engaging in sex acts for hire.” A pimp is “one who arranges such sex acts for hire.” A voyeur is “one who enjoys seeing the sex acts or sex organs of others.” All three were (and are) psychosexual pathologies.

Each definition describes Old Bailey’s latest campus sex entertainment.

Child sex victims worldwide testify that their predators, like Bailey, commonly couched their sex abuse in “educational” terms.

“I am helping you learn about sex!”

“This is educational!”

“Only puritans see this as wrong!”

“I am teaching you how to have an orgasm.”

Professor Bailey “educated” 120 gasping students with wide-screen pornography while a naked, unbalanced woman was paid to have her reproductive organs assaulted with a mechanical device.

Bailey also asserted he was teaching them about “orgasm.”

Now, I have that bridge to sell you, cheap.

Bailey, Northwestern’s resident voyeur fits both the pimp and the voyeur profile.

One of the peepers, Bailey eagerly watched both the sex entertainment and his young students who were coping with their sexual discomfort, confusion and excitement.

Bailey’s students hoped for a good grade in his human sexuality course, so most accepted his “invitation” to watch the pitiable prostitute with the device, until, announced Bailey, she “reached sexual climax,” said The Daily Northwestern.

Really?!

My, my, my.

Unfortunately, like “Harry Met Sally,” Bailey knows this isn’t science and that there is no evidence that the wretched woman had a “sexual climax.”

Oh, she said so.

Northwestern paid Weird Chicago Tours, a “Network for Kinky People,” for Bailey’s “extracurricular activity.”

This means a sex business was paid by Northwestern to indoctrinate students into prostitution.

So, will Bordello Bailey and Northwestern officials be arrested for suborning and pimping prostitution – and were all viewers of his illicit demo adults?

Northwestern has long supported Bailey’s barely legal sex activities. Dec. 23, 2002, then-Rep. Mark Souder seethed over one Bailey payout:

“Do I need a Ph.D. to understand why it is a sensible prioritization to spend hundreds of thousands of research dollars to pay women to watch porn, while countless Americans are suffering from debilitating diseases with no cures?”

In 2003 Bailey was “investigated” for describing his sex with a transvestite subject in his book, without her/his informed consent.

6Dr. Judith Reisman is a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Study of Social Trends, Human Rights, and Media Forensics.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. This article was originally published on WorldNetDaily on March 11, 2011. You can buy Dr. Reisman’s book Sexual Sabotage on her website.

Judicial Insanity in Indiana

/0 Comments/in , /by
Recently, a rather shocking “judicial opinion” was handed down by a bare majority of the Indiana Supreme Court, to the effect that it is supposedly illegal under Indiana’s “public policy” for any individual to resist an unlawful search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention by rogue law-enforcement officers (or, presumably, any other rogue public officials purporting to enforce, but actually violating, the law).

Many people are rightly concerned that this decision will provide more grist for the mill of the national para-military police state now being elaborated around the misnamed Department of Homeland Security, which is stretching its tentacles into every State and Local police department. No doubt it will—and perhaps was even intended to do so. For, plainly, this decision is an all-out frontal attack on a principle well known to the Founding Fathers. As Sir William Blackstone observed, “[s]elf-defence * * * , as it is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the law of society”. Commentaries on the Laws of England (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Robert Bell, Subscribers’ Edition, 4 Volumes & Appendix, 1771-1773), Volume 3, at 4.

Protective measures, though, are available. WE THE PEOPLE are not at the mercy of the ideological descendants of Reinhardt Heydrich and Lavrenti Beria who seem to have usurped control over much of America’s contemporary “judiciary”. For Indiana, as well as every other State in the Union, has a government of legislative supremacy subject to popular sovereignty. So, this most recent “judicial” travesty can be rectified in Indiana, and prevented in other States, by the simple expedient of a statute.

As a public service, I have drafted a model bill that, with a bit of workmanlike tinkering by local lawyers to fit it into the possible peculiarities of each State’s own code, should do the job (at least as a first step).

I am confident that, in many States, foresighted patriots will put this suggestion to good use.

AN ACT TO GUARANTEE THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE TO THE PEOPLE OF […name of State…]

SECTION 1. The State of [ … ] recognizes that the right of personal self-defense is an unalienable right that no just government, or any official of any such government, may abridge, infringe, or burden at any time, for any reason, or to any degree.

SECTION 2. No individual within this State shall be denied, prevented from exercising, or penalized for having exercised, the right to defend

(a) his or her person in any place; or

(b) the person of any member of such individual’s family, or any friend, associate, or co-worker in any place; or

(c) the privacy of such individual’s home, permanent or temporary residence, place of employment, or vehicle; or

(d) the security of such individual’s property, possessions, papers, and other effects of whatever nature, wherever they may lawfully be kept; or

(e) the privacy of the home, permanent or temporary residence, place of employment, or vehicle of any member of such individual’s family, or any friend, associate, or co-worker who has, directly or indirectly, placed such home, permanent or temporary residence, place of employment, or vehicle in such individual’s custody or under his or her supervision or care; or

(f) the security of the property, possessions, papers, and other effects of whatever nature, wherever they may lawfully be kept, of any member of such individual’s family, or any friend, associate, or co-worker who has, directly or indirectly, placed such property, possessions, papers, or other effects in such individual’s custody or under his or her supervision or care,

against an unlawful search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention, or unlawful attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention, by any law-enforcement officer or other public official of this State or any of its political subdivisions, so long as such individual employs in his, her, or another’s defense, or in the defense of the privacy or security of his, her, or another’s home, permanent or temporary residence, place of employment, vehicle, property, possessions, papers, or other effects, no force or threat of force greater than he or she reasonably believes at the time to be necessary under the circumstances in order effectively to deter, repel, or otherwise resist such unlawful search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention or unlawful attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention.

SECTION 3. In any civil action or criminal prosecution in which is at issue an individual’s exercise of his or her right of self defense with respect to an actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention by any law-enforcement officer or other public official of this State or any of its political subdivisions—

(a) The lawfulness or unlawfulness of such actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention shall be determined before any other issue is heard and decided.

(b) The party or parties asserting the lawfulness of the said actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention shall have the burden to produce competent evidence thereof beyond a reasonable doubt.
(c) No matter how any other issues in the action or prosecution may be tried or decided under applicable law, the issue of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention shall be tried to a jury, in which proceeding

(i) the jury shall consist of twelve persons;

(ii) the jury shall be instructed that the reasonableness of the force or threat of force that was employed by the individual in the exercise of his or her right of self-defense must be determined from the viewpoint of the individual at the time that he or she so acted; and

(iii) the jury shall be instructed that it may judge, not only the facts, but also the law under color of which arose the actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention; and

(iv) the jury’s verdict must be unanimous.

SECTION 4. In any civil action, howsoever and by whomsoever initiated, in which is at issue an individual’s exercise of his or her right of self defense with respect to an actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention by any law-enforcement officer or other public official of this State or any of its political subdivisions, the said individual may cause to be named or joined as adverse parties any or all of the individuals who counseled, authorized, planned, or participated in such actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention, for the purpose of adjudicating the lawfulness thereof. In the ensuing litigation, no defense of or other argument based upon official immunity, whether absolute, qualified, or of any other kind or degree whatsoever, shall be allowed.

And if the jury determines that such actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention was unlawful, then each and every individual who counseled, authorized, planned, or participated in such actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention shall be personally liable, jointly and severally, for all damages suffered by the individual who exercised his or her right of self-defense, as well as for all reasonable attorney’s fees, expenses, and other costs which that individual incurred in litigating the question of the unlawfulness of the actual or attempted search, seizure, arrest, or other assault or detention. Provided, that no portion of any damages, attorney’s fees, expenses, or other costs imposed upon any individual under this subsection shall be paid by any public treasury, office, fiscal agent, or other authority of the State or any political subdivision thereof; nor shall any such public treasury, office, fiscal agent, or other authority reimburse or make whole any such individual, either directly or through insurance, guarantee, surety, or any other third-party payment, for any such damages, attorney’s fees, expenses, or other costs

vieiraDr. Edwin Vieira  is IAI’s Distinguished Senior Fellow in Jurisprudence and Constitutional and Monetary Law.

This article was originally published originally published at NewsWithViews.com on May 21, 2011.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

 

Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing

/0 Comments/in , /by
A curious discussion was started on the Website of the Inter-American Institute between the Russian geopolitical theorist Aleksandr Dugin and the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho. In this discussion Mr. Dugin argues against global capitalism and the “New World Order.” He foresees the ultimate victory of Eurasian land power over American sea power. It is difficult to say whether Dugin’s rhetoric has real long-term importance or whether it will prove to be one of Moscow’s passing trial balloons. Whatever the case, Dugin’s ideas appear to justify a future war against the United States; furthermore, his promotion within the Russian establishment indicates an observable strategic tendency.

Dugin’s point of departure is simple: Western and Russian (or Eurasian) civilizations are incompatible. “The metaphysical basis of the West is individualism,” wrote Dugin. Russian civilization, on the other hand, stresses “a collective entity.” The collective entity in question is a Eurasian commonwealth, with its capital in Moscow. In Dugin’s view America is the champion of a hyper-materialistic ethic, based on radical individualism. It is subversive of traditional human values. As an empire of “frenetic consumption,” America threatens to remake the world in its own image. To prevent this, Dugin proposes an alliance between Russian/Chinese militarists and the Muslim Brotherhood. Appealing to the conservative sympathies of Professor de Carvalho and others, Dugin wrote: “every … traditionalist should be on the Eurasian and Islamic side against materialist and capitalist decline….” He believes that all conservatives and traditionalists should join with Moscow and the Islamists in smashing the Bilderberg Club, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

Here we encounter a central theme of Moscow’s old (and new) rhetoric: Western civilization is a den of iniquity ruled by a wicked money power. Within Western civilization the Left already represents a movement against capitalism. Now it is time to bring the political Right into the anti-capitalist camp. Dugin therefore extends a hand of friendship to all conservatives and traditionalists. We have the same enemy, he explains. And that enemy should be attacked. The globalist project, says Dugin, “is far more powerful … [and] dangerous … than the two other projects [i.e., Russian/Chinese militarism and Islamism].” The merchants of the West, and the financial oligarchy they build, can only be stopped by a combination of Russian-Chinese “national-militarism” and “Islamic religious fundamentalism.” The choice is clear, says Dugin, “and everyone is invited to make it by himself.”

Furthermore, as Dugin points out, the emerging neo-socialist trend in Latin America suggests that a new bloc of countries will soon join Russia, China and the Islamists. As a Brazilian, Professor de Carvalho should know that South America isn’t really part of Western civilization at all. The Latin Americans are, by nature, opposed to the West’s money changers. Though Dugin does not pose as a Luddite, he nonetheless suggests (however indirectly) that the fundamental technology of civilization (i.e., the technology of money) must be smashed; and those who handle money (i.e., bankers) are vile. He does not acknowledge that money (together with fire and the wheel) is one of those inventions responsible for getting man out of the Stone Age. Instead, he says that the world will never accept “the absoluteness of the free market, human rights, liberalism, individualism and parliamentarian democracy.” Such ideals only signify the hegemony of the Western financial elite. Surely, Western conservatives cannot align themselves with corrupt money interests. And they cannot remain neutral, either. For the reality is, they must choose one side over the other. It is either Rome or Carthage. And for Dugin, U.S. global power represents “the eternal Carthage, which became a worldwide phenomenon.”

This theory, by the way, implies that America is doomed. In the end, sea power cannot cope with land power. The great wealth that comes to sea power is ultimately corrupting and vulnerable. Athens, as a sea power, was defeated by Sparta. Carthage, as a sea power, was defeated by Rome. In the end, the land power can become a sea power. Inevitably, Eurasia defeats Oceania. Russia and China form the whole of Eurasia, together with its “temporary” Islamist allies. What can the United States do against this great combination? The Americans cannot possibly “impose” individual freedom and the market economy on such a vast territory. The entire American project is therefore doomed, and will be squeezed out of existence in the end. As for those Americans who do not serve the greedy financial oligarchy of the free market system, Dugin says, “There may be another America, but that does not change anything in general.” America apart from the CFR and the neo-cons (i.e., “World Carthage”) is a nullity.

Dugin is incredulous regarding de Carvalho’s idea that the globalist elite “is not an enemy of Russia, China or the Islamic countries” but a collaborator with them in efforts to “destroy the sovereignty … and economy of the United States.” Because Dugin relies on a set formula for stigmatizing American policy-makers and their motives, he does not see the extent to which American leaders are themselves neo-socialists ready to hoist the banner of “holistic collectivism.”

In response, Professor de Carvalho noted the difference between Dugin’s mission and his own. “[Dugin’s] task is to recruit soldiers for the battle against the West and for the establishment of the universal Eurasian Empire. Mine is to attempt to understand the political situation of the world so that my readers and I are not reduced to the condition of blind men caught in the gunfire of the global combat….” To associate the globalist elite with America, argues de Carvalho, is an error. The globalist elite are following a course of their own, which does not coincide with American national interests. “I defend one-half of the West against the other half,” he says.

As a matter of course, de Carvalho’s claims that the Western financial elite has been working to establish its own worldwide socialist dictatorship, which is not to be confused with the dictatorship of Moscow or Beijing. The socialism put forward by the richest families in the West is a means for ensuring their ongoing influence – an effort to protect themselves against the ravages of free market competition. To prove his case, de Carvalho points to the work of Anthony Sutton. He also points to the “industrial blossoming of China … and its transfiguration … into the most powerful potential enemy of the USA….”

Here the question must be asked: What kind of brilliant scheme could entail the industrialization of China, and the arming of an implacable enemy? Setting aside Sutton’s misinterpretations of the data (where he completely fails to grasp the psychological realities of the capitalist milieu), the entire situation may be clarified by reference to a single fact: namely, the suicidal trajectory of the Western financial elite over the past half-century.  As James Burnham indicated long ago, liberalism is a philosophy leading to Western suicide. By industrializing and arming China, by rebuilding Russia’s position, by opening Europe to Islamic immigration, by adopting social policies which have collapsed Europe’s birth rate, we see the rush to suicide. What geniuses indeed! What leadership! Through intellectual superficiality, political shallowness, and arrogance, they cannot possibly hope to survive their own policies. If there is a plot to establish a universal socialist dictatorship the only people who stand a chance of establishing it are in Moscow and Beijing. I fail to see how Washington and London remain standing, let alone influential.

The pre-war propaganda of Alexander Dugin merely provides a rationale for destroying something that has essentially weakened and undermined itself over a period of decades. The course of self-undermining is not conspiratorial, in my view. Wealth and power, combined with an overly rationalistic intellectual culture, tend to produce a mild form of insanity within elite groups.  Russian, Chinese and Islamic leaders are not free from their own special forms of insanity. It is the large, deracinated, non-traditional, highly bureaucratic structures of modernity that contribute to such insanity, along with the shift away from a culture based on books and serious reading to a culture based on images, television and slogans. The intellect in all classes, among the most advanced societies, has been declining for decades. Stupidity may be added to insanity, the one amplifying the other.  This is the real New World Order. We have left behind the greatness of the past, setting aside the classics. The vaunted elite are merely sheep. Or as Winston Churchill once described a representative specimen: “A sheep in sheep’s clothing.”

Jeffrey Nyquist is the President of the Strategic Crisis Center and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political Science at the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought.

This article was originally published on Financial Sense on May 5, 2011. The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.