Know The Enemy of Liberty: the National Rifle Association

Oppressors Not Protectors

With the release of the first episode of the Defending Our America series titled “Know Your Enemies and Know Yourself” the National Rifle Association (NRA) puts itself at the forefront of the shills for tyranny and empire. Please watch the first episode and the season preview. They advocate police power to fight the war on drugs, police power to secure the borders, and military power to fight Islam overseas. In other words, they advocate for the very things that are destroying our liberties. Not once in either video do we hear the words liberty or freedom.

The war on drugs has lead to the destruction of the right to privacy and property. It is driving the militarization of the police enabling Commando style raids that now happen over one-hundred times a day in the United States. Sometimes they are based on nothing more than the word of an informant. Sometimes they are to serve a warrant on a non-violent person. Asset forfeiture has police forces becoming predators seeking out the maximum take with little or no due process. Law enforcement has become the standing army many Founders warned us not to have. The war on drugs keeps the money flowing to the law enforcement establishment.

“Securing” the massive southern border of the US is a pointless and impossible task. In the process of attempting it the government is building up a police state characterized by checkpoints, warrantless searches, and other intrusive controls. We need the governments permission just to work now that they've made it illegal to hire undocumented workers and implemented e-verify. This is another form of tyranny that keeps money flowing to the law enforcement establishment.

Fighting Islam is a farce designed to keep money following into the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned was taking over. It furnishes an excuse to keep taxes and government debt high. “...armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many under the domination of the few.” is how James Madison put it.

Follow the money. It comes as no surprise that the series is sponsored by Sig Sauer a supplier of weapons to law enforcement and the military. It is obviously important to Sig Sauer that the people support the gravy train they're riding. Hey, who cares about liberty when there's government money to be had?

If my words aren't enough to convince you perhaps you'll listen to Patrick Henry. He warned of the dangers lurking in the constitution, the very document the videos advocate defending. Below are selected, relevant excerpts from Henry's speech arguing against adoption of the constitution titled “Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?”:

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object...by that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty. But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire.

But, sir, we are not feared by foreigners; we do not make nations tremble. Would this constitute happiness, or secure liberty? I trust, sir, our political hemisphere will ever direct their operations to the security of those objects.

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world...blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Now that we clearly see that the NRA is wholly behind the powerful government that we have to just trust and hope will not oppress

us it is time to turn our backs on that vile organization. Don't let the Siren song of patriotism fool you. Stand for liberty, not the empire and its police state!

The Broken Constitution (video)

 This is the speech I gave at the

2nd Amendment Awareness Rally & Open Carry March! .223 2014!

My message that the constitution has failed went over better than I thought it would. It says a lot about this crowd that we can have differences of opinion and still respect each other.

Democratic Socialism, Guns, and the Failure of the Constitution

“...whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain --- that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

--Lysander Spooner, 

No Treason, NO. VI., The Constitution Of No Authority

This one was just too good to pass up. An acquaintance on the left sent me the Democratic Socialists of America article "There Is No Second Amendment Right To A Gun". It reinforces everything the anti-federalists said about the Constitution back when and everything libertarians like Lysander Spooner have been warning us about since then.

Early in the article the author, Steve Max, states, "Today, progressives must claim the legitimacy of the Constitution in advocating gun control, and not let it be further hijacked by the Right." He then goes on to tie the right to gun ownership to membership in a militia, "There have been no state militias since 1903, and there is no longer a constitutional right to gun ownership. It doesn’t exist! " Brilliant! Destroy our right to organize to defend ourselves and then use the fact that they've destroyed one right to claim that they can legitimately destroy another one, namely the right to bear arms. Read for yourself how Mr. Max quotes the Second Amendment to justify gun control:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Clearly, the right to bear arms was connected to militia service. There were not the votes in either house to pass a stand-alone right to gun ownership.

This is all very interesting but only makes sense if one ignores the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Ninth Amendment reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Obviously, not every right has to be listed to be valid. The right to own guns apart from membership in a militia clearly falls into this category.

The real issue is the question, does the government have the legal power to take people's guns? One searches the Constitution in vain trying to find a clause that empowers it to do so. However, the Tenth Amendment reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This should be a great restriction on governmental power. Since the Constitution nowhere grants the government the power to take our guns the Tenth Amendment should stop them from doing so. Unfortunately, these amendments aren't working. The Constitution has failed just as the anti-federalists warned us it would. The dismal state of our rights today and Mr. Max's article attest to this failure. Patrick Henry spoke about the danger lurking in the document, “O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone...” He went on to explain how the Constitution takes the power to defend their liberty away from the people:

Let me here call your attention to that part which gives the Congress power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States — reserving to the states, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither — this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory.

[From Patrick Henry's speech arguing against adoption of the Constitution titled "Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?"]

Another anti-federalist a issued similar warning which Mr. Max twists into this nonsense, “The Second Amendment was rooted in the then living memory of the militia-fought battles of Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill. A modern day equivalent of those battles would turn America into Syria or worse.”

The idea that the people should be armed and organized to defend themselves is actually rooted in the fact that someone must have power. If the people have that power no one will try to attack or tyrannize them. If the people are disarmed a government will come to power that will tyrannize them. This has been extensively written about. That Mr. Max should pretend otherwise is inexcusable. For example, John Trenchard wrote:

...if a prince will rule us with a rod of iron, and invade our laws and liberties...we...must patiently submit to our bondage, or stand upon our own defense; which if we are enabled to do, we shall never be put upon it...

[Emphasis added. From “An Argument Shewing, that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a Free Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy“]

Contrary to Mr. Max's ranting, arming the people, rather than the government, and organizing them to defend themselves leads to peace not civil war. Matter of fact, it was an anti-federalist who correctly predicted that adopting the Constitution would lead to civil war.

All of the above is secondary. More important than law is morality. As I wrote in “Progressivism’s Violent World”:

It is immoral to initiate the use of force or the threat of force against peaceful people. In other words, a person has to be actually engaging in aggression or credibly threatening to do so before it is morally justifiable to use force in retaliation. What does that have to do with guns? The mere possession of an inanimate object such a gun aggresses against no one. There is no moral justification for taking guns away from people who adhere to the non-aggression principle since this involves initiating the use of force to separate them from their weapons.

This alone destroys the morality of gun control.

In the end Mr. Max's ideas are a nightmare. When he writes, "We need to start saying loudly and strongly that if you want a military gun, go join the National Guard..." he shows himself to be an enemy of liberty and a friend of militarism by advocating that people join the institution that directly destroyed what militias we had. When he writes, “...government at all levels has the right to limit guns just as it does drugs, tobacco, gambling, alcohol, tainted meat and a host of other evils.” Mr. Max shows that he sees no part of our lives that can't be forcibly controlled by the government. Hiding this tyranny behind a smiling democratic facade that allegedly wants to protect us doesn't change its evil nature. 
 
Mr. Max, we need to get out from under your failed Constitution and the tyrannical institutions it has created. Instead, we need to set up an institutional framework that will protect our lives and liberties. Guns and liberty are inseparable. It is past time to disarm and disband the government and set up independent militias and other private providers of security. We can only do that with military guns in civilian hands. ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

The Standing Armies of Yesterday and the Police State Today

I gave this presentation at the Citizens for Liberty meeting on August 20, 2013 near Norristown, Pennsylvania. Below are links to source material so readers can do their own research and come to their own conclusions.

Many of the quotes used in the presentation are parts of essays or speeches that are well worth reading start to finish. This first series of quotes is from John Trenchard's 1697 book “An Argument Shewing, that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a Free Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy” (http://www.reformation.org/john-trenchard.pdf):

And if we enquire how these unhappy nations have lost that precious jewel liberty...we shall find their miseries...proceed from this, that their necessities or indiscretion have permitted a standing army to be kept amongst them...

...no nation ever preserved its liberty, that maintained an army otherwise constituted within the seat of their government...

...the Israelites, Athenians, Corinthians, Archaians, Lacedemonians, Thebans, Samnites, and Romans; none of which nations whilst they kept their liberty were ever known to maintain any soldiers in constant pay within their cities...

 It's the misfortune of all countries, that they sometimes lie under an unhappy

necessity to defend themselves by arms against the ambition of their

governors, and to fight for what is their own; for if a prince will rule us with a

rod of iron, and invade our laws and liberties...we...must patiently submit to our bondage, or stand upon our own defense; which if we are enabled to do, we shall never be put upon it...

This subject is so self-evident, that I am almost ashamed to prove it: for if we look through the world, we shall find in no country, liberty and an army stand

together; so that to know whether a people are free or slaves, it is necessary

only to ask, whether there is an army kept amongst them?

The next quote is from John Trenchard's 1698 book “A SHORT HISTORY OF Standing Armies IN ENGLAND” (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Standing_Armies_in_England):

I will venture to say, that if this Army does not make us Slaves, we are the only People upon Earth in such Circumstances that ever escaped it… If this Army does not enslave us, it is barely because we have a virtuous Prince that will not attempt it; and it is a most miserable thing to have no other Security for our Liberty, than the Will of a Man, though the most just Man living: For that is not a free Government where there is a good Prince (for even the most arbitrary Governments have had sometimes a Relaxation of their Miseries) but where it is so constituted, that no one can be a Tyrant if he would. Cicero says, though a Master does not tyrannize, yet it is a lamentable consideration that it is in his Power to do so; and therefore such a Power is to be trusted to none, which if it does not find a Tyrant, commonly makes one; and if not him, to be sure a Successor.

The last quote from John Trenchard's works is from Cato's letters No. 95 Further Reasonings against Standing Armies (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1239&chapter=64519&layout=html&Itemid=27):

It is certain, that all parts of Europe which are enslaved, have been enslaved by armies; and it is absolutely impossible, that any nation which keeps them amongst themselves can long preserve their liberties; nor can any nation perfectly lose their liberties who are without such guests: And yet, though all men see this, and at times confess it, yet all have joined in their turns, to bring this heavy evil upon themselves and their country. 

 

There are two quotes in the presentation from Patrick Henry's speech “Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?” (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Henry%27s_speech_in_the_Virginia_Ratifying_Convention):

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.
A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders?

No discussion of the police state these days is complete without mentioning Radley Balko's just published book “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”. A great article by the author offering a glimpse at what is in the book can be read here.  

During the question and answer portion of the night I brought up Edward Bernays' 1928 book “Propaganda”. I highly recommend reading at least CHAPTER VI PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP (http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html#SECTION6)

Progressivism’s Violent World

Unfortunately, no discussion of gun rights can take place these days without talking about the horrible murders at Newtown, CT last year. My heartfelt condolences go out to the families and friends of the victims as well as my sympathies to the survivors and the rest of that community for having to go through such a terrible experience.

The gun haters say that because of Newtown the gun rights advocates need to pipe down and accept whatever they want to dish out. I say there’s no better time than now to dispassionately look at how and why there is a violence problem here. The first thing that needs to be faced is that things are never simple. The problem is complex and simplistic approaches like banning guns or putting police in the schools won’t work for a number of reasons. No issue can be looked at in a vacuum. Therefore, as with any issue, we have to start with basic principles and moral implications. That means talking about the one moral imperative that guides us in all human relationships, the non-aggression principle, the one that was so horribly violated at Newtown. It is immoral to initiate the use of force or the threat of force against peaceful people.  In other words, a person has to be actually engaging in aggression or credibly threatening to do so before it is morally justifiable to use force in retaliation. What does that have to do with guns? The mere possession of an inanimate object such a gun aggresses against no one. There is no moral justification for taking guns away from people who adhere to the non-aggression principle since this involves initiating the use of force to separate them from their weapons.

Property rights are part of this equation also. People have a right to their property. Guns are property. Separating people from their guns by force is theft of those weapons.

There is a moral justification for, at times, using force. That is self-defense. Since the initiation of force is immoral the right to self-defense seems obvious. Depriving people of their guns is clearly taking away part of their ability to use defensive force. This is another way that gun control is a violation of people’s rights.

Before anyone says “that sounds nice in theory but doesn’t work in the real world” let’s look at how this plays out in the real world. To write about all the tyrannical governments that have killed, raped, tortured, enslaved, imprisoned, exiled, and stolen from all the people they have disarmed would require a book. Gun control is in reality people control starting from some very racist roots. In Maryland the law read "That no Negro or other slave, within this Province, shall be permitted to carry any Gun or any other offensive Weapon...." In Nazi Germany the law read “Jews are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons”. Whether it was not allowing African-Americans to own guns in this country or not allowing Jews to own guns in Nazi Germany the intent was the same, to have disarmed victims incapable of resistance. In the bloody 20th century, Mao Tse-tung summed it up perfectly, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  Governments want disarmed victims. This is what Mao had in mind and there are seventy million dead Chinese to prove it, part of the over two-hundred million killed by governments in the 20th century. Governments that implemented gun control have committed all of the major genocides.

That’s why there’s never a good time to talk about disarming the people. What the discussion should be about is disarming the government. There is a massive imbalance between the power of the government and the power of the people.  Not only the military but the law enforcement establishments here are overwhelmingly strong. We need to start shifting power away from the government by putting these functions back in the people’s hands where they belong. One of the lesser known Founders, Tench Coxe, explained it well. Picking up on the same theme as Mao he wrote:

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom… Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.

There is only one way to guarantee our lives and liberty. That is to be stronger than those who seek to take them are.

This is why the Founders warned us against having a standing army. They knew that such a force would be used to oppress.  Today, the “standing army” that we have to worry about domestically is the huge law enforcement establishment. I’m talking about not only state and local police but also agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and ad nauseum. Rather than deploy troops on the streets they use law enforcement to control us. While these agencies exist our liberty will always be in danger. In his greatest speech titled “Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?”, arguing against adoption of the constitution, Patrick Henry warned us:

The honorable gentleman who presides told us that, to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone….Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders?

Patrick Henry was right. Gun owners today can’t stand up to the law enforcement establishment much less the military. People that advocate civilian guns to counter-balance the government’s weapons are engaging in a dangerous fantasy that is rightly ridiculed. In the US since the government can’t disarm us completely they have armed themselves to the hilt. This has a similar effect as disarming us. One only needs look at the militarization of the law enforcement establishment to see this. There is only one answer and that is institutional change shutting down those agencies while building up the private means of defending ourselves. We need to move to a system of private security. There is no need for local police. History has already proved that private security is better at protecting us than the government is. A shining example is Oro Valley, Arizona. In 1975 they hired Rural/Metro Inc. to be their police department, providing the services previously provided by the county sheriff. Crime rates where greatly reduced at a fraction of the cost of a government police force.

There is no need for national level law enforcement. Agencies like those I mentioned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and the Drug Enforcement Administration are merely instruments of oppression enforcing many unconstitutional laws. One is reminded of Thomas Jefferson's words about the overly powerful capitol,

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

Not only is private security better able to protect people, and their property, they have a provider/client relationship with them. Under this scenario there is no incentive for private security to enforce something like the drug prohibition and the government wouldn't have the means to do so.

Bear in mind that policing, as we know it today, got its start in the mid-19th century. It wasn't truly about preventing crime, as crime rates were quite low back then. It was all about expanding the government's power. Fast-forward to today and we find that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, and property is the government. This is due to their tremendous police power. The only way for us to restore our rights is to take that power away from the government.

There is a foreign policy aspect to this too. While the US government has a huge military to wield against the rest of the world it will remain, to quote Patrick Henry again, “a powerful and mighty empire”.  Moving to a militia-based defense is impossible while there is gun control. All too many who advocate peace also advocate civilian disarmament not realizing that they are actually empowering the military that they oppose.  We can guarantee peace, at home and abroad, only by disarming the government and arming the people.

Digging deeper, though, there are other connections between domestic and foreign tyranny that many don’t see. The Communist Manifesto is a good a place to start this analysis. The four of the ten planks in that book that have been openly implemented in the United States are most relevant to this discussion:

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. - Not only does this furnish money for the government’s use (such as paying for aggressive wars), it provides them with one of its worse organs of plunder and domestic repression, the IRS.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. - The Federal Reserve System, the United States’ central bank, is the greatest enabler the government has. It creates the easy money that finances all its mischief.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. - The corporate media are but the government’s propaganda arm, hyping the wars and glorifying the troops and LEOs at every turn. The government owns the roads, most public transportation, ports, and the airports, giving it control of all movement and vast resources.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. - Government schools are in reality also indoctrination centers. They produce loyal citizens trained to unquestioningly support the state.

It is truly scary how mainstream these destructive ideas have become. Today, we live in a world of the progressives’ creation, somewhere halfway between socialism and liberty. It is a volatile mixture. It is a world increasingly ruled by force; force wielded by a powerfully armed government. Whether it is the force of the income tax, the force of compulsory education, the force of regulation, or the force of law enforcement the effects are clear to all willing to see: a society becoming sicker and more aggressive. We’ve sunk a long way since 1850 when a Frenchman, Frederick Bastiat, wrote in his book  “The Law”:

Is there any need to offer proof that this odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord; that it tends to destroy society itself? If such proof is needed, look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.

They’re sure not talking about us like that in France anymore! Progressivism has failed to achieve its lofty ideals. Instead it has created our present situation of crime and murder, war and empire. It is this failure that the advocates of gun control want to cover up. Instead of facing reality they want to blame guns for the problems the implementation of their ideas has created. Before anyone gets too smug, let me emphasize that both political parties have adopted the progressive ideology. Today’s so-called liberals and conservatives advocate different degrees and different aspects of it, but advocate it they do. The liberals may advocate gun control, but it is the conservatives who advocate the police state that can enforce it. Stop and frisk is a great example of this. Gun control is what drives it. While the liberals object to stop and frisk they support its driving force. While the conservatives advocate stop and frisk they oppose the gun control that drives it.

It’s past time for both sides to realize that the killing will only end, society will only heal by turning it away from being ruled by force and toward voluntary interaction between its members. Liberty is the answer. Implementing it means change at the institutional level, disarming the government and keeping the people not only armed but also organized to defend themselves.  Back in 1789 Representative Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts explained it well. During the Floor debate over the Second Amendment he said:

What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberty of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

Today, society smolders in those ruins. It’s time to put that fire out.

[author's note: some parts of this article were taken from articles previously published. See here and here]  

This article was based on my speech "The Relationship Between Liberty, Power, and Guns"

http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-relationship-between-liberty-power.html

The Relationship Between Liberty, Power, and Guns (video)

At the Citizens for Liberty meeting on January 16, 2013 Darren Wolfe talked about how the loss of liberty has created an unstable society.

This presentation inspired the article "Progressivism's Violent World"

http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2013/01/progressivisms-violent-world.html

Below are some of the quotes used in the speech:

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom.... Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
                                                                                 --Tench Coxe

The honorable gentleman who presides told us that, to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone....Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders?

                         --Patrick Henry, "Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Henry%27s_speech_in_the_Virginia_Ratifying_Convention

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
                                            --Thomas Jefferson

Is there any need to offer proof that this odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord; that it tends to destroy society itself? If such proof is needed, look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.
                                                      --Frederick Bastiat, "The Law"
                                      http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G002

Patrick Henry's Warning: The Tax-gatherers on the Rampage

This excerpt is from Patrick Henry's greatest speech, "Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?"  where he argued against adoption of the Constitution:

In this scheme of energetic government, the people will find two sets of tax-gatherers — the state and the federal sheriffs. This, it seems to me, will produce such dreadful oppression as the people cannot possibly bear. The federal sheriff may commit what oppression, make what distresses, he pleases, and ruin you with impunity; for how are you to tie his hands? Have you any sufficiently decided means of preventing him from sucking your blood by speculations, commissions, and fees? Thus thousands of your people will be most shamefully robbed: our state sheriffs, those unfeeling blood-suckers, have, under the watchful eye of our legislature, committed the most horrid and barbarous ravages on our people. It has required the most constant vigilance of the legislature to keep them from totally ruining the people; a repeated succession of laws has been made to suppress their iniquitous speculations and cruel extortions; and as often has their nefarious ingenuity devised methods of evading the force of those laws: in the struggle they have generally triumphed over the legislature.

It is a fact that lands have been sold for five shillings, which were worth one hundred pounds: if sheriffs, thus immediately under the eye of our state legislature and judiciary, have dared to commit these outrages, what would they not have done if their masters had been at Philadelphia or New York? If they perpetrate the most unwarrantable outrage on your person or property, you cannot get redress on this side of Philadelphia or New York; and how can you get it there? If your domestic avocations could permit you to go thither, there you must appeal to judges sworn to support this Constitution, in opposition to that of any state, and who may also be inclined to favor their own officers. When these harpies are aided by excisemen, who may search, at any time, your houses, and most secret recesses, will the people bear it? If you think so, you differ from me. Where I thought there was a possibility of such mischiefs, I would grant power with a niggardly hand; and here there is a strong probability that these oppressions shall actually happen. I may be told that it is safe to err on that side, because such regulations may be made by Congress as shall restrain these officers, and because laws are made by our representatives, and judged by righteous judges: but, sir, as these regulations may be made, so they may not; and many reasons there are to induce a belief that they will not. I shall therefore be an infidel on that point till the day of my death.

Absolutely prophetic, Patrick Henry knew what a strong national government would do. It is past time for this to end.