Interpreting the Law

April 16, 2023 | Founders, Founding Documents, General, History, Militia, Republic

by Nicholas Testaccio

Words have specific meanings, and when placed together, those words form a thought, an idea,  convey a story, or promote a proposition. In law, the combination of words in a clause cannot be construed to mean something other than what they meant at the time the law was enacted.

In the year 1776, a committee of the Continental Congress was formed to write a document explaining the need “for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth…” their rightful place.

Chosen to write the draft for what could have been the death sentence for its signatories, Thomas Jefferson composed what should be considered the foundation, by which all the people of this World ought to live. In it are the words, “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.”

When “A Declaration” was written, slavery was an institution that existed in, not only the colonies, but also, around the World. Jefferson himself, was a slave owner as were other members of the Congress. Slavery was not unique to the America’s. It was an institution that existed for centuries. The Bible speaks of it, telling the story of the Hebrew nation as slaves to the empire of the Egyptians. Slavery existed as part of every culture, nation, and empire. However, in this timeless document that we now refer to as “The Declaration of Independence”, the Congress enacted the words “that all men are created equal.” What they did not agree to, and should be obvious to all, is that all men remain equal throughout their lives. Herein lies one of our problems. The misunderstanding of the words as they come together in a sentence, and in this case a legal document, that provides us with a specific line of thought.

From “A Declaration” to the U.S. Constitution, the people of this once great nation have made it their folly to misinterpret and to misunderstand the rule of law. This, as I’ve stated in the past, is a constitutional Federal Republic. Those we elect or appoint to perform a specific duty are bound by an oath of office. That office holds its allegiance to the law as it is written not as it has been twisted and bent in order that those seeking power may retain and enhance that power.

England was a monarchy, as it remains today, although the power of the monarchy is greatly reduced from the time of King George. Again, monarchies were the rule of the day when our revolution began. Kings and Queens were not elected, but rather, they were born to their positions. A “Divine Right” as it was known, because of the accepted belief that God placed the individual in the position of authority. It was the doctrine of the time.

However, those Fifty-Six men who signed their own death warrant when they put their name to the Declaration, thought differently. The words in the document do not reflect a contradiction of the world in which they knew, and we, today, seem incapable of understanding. While we can look back and second guess those men, I can assure you that there is a mindset today that would own slaves simply for the pleasure of imposing their authority.

Today, agenda, and propaganda are the norm, reality escapes most who live at a time so distant from the centuries past that it does not seem logical to disparage those who risked it all so that the words of “A Declaration” could come to life. This is the time that we must accept that what we have been taught is designed to oppress, rather than enlighten.

Jefferson wrote “that all men are created equal”, he did not write that all men remain equal, attain equality, or are able to live as all others do. Even to the casual observer, or those who have been fooled into thinking that they learned something worthwhile by attending a university of progressive professors, should comprehend that the words in the Declaration did not reflect some utopian state, wherein everyone goes about their merry way, with all the privileges, wealth, and prosperity of the neighbor across the street, or across the nation.

The propaganda spewed out by the intelligentsia is more in tune with a desire to show themselves as superior, rather than reflecting on the reality of the time, and even today. The nonsense of the “anointed” who cast their superiority, can be easily debunked when we examine the word “unalienable.”

At the time of the writing of “A Declaration” the word unalienable meant that it could not be regulated, taken, or relinquished. If we allow one or even a group of individuals to abdicate a right, we have opened the floodgates to tyrannical government determining that since one has abdicated the right another must follow in that the right is not absolute. Even with a firm explanation of the word, there are members of our legislatures that believe that our rights are not absolute, and that they can regulate them and often place such a burden on them as to rule them out of existence.

So, as we go through time from the creation of this nation to today, we must realize that there are aspects of our law that have been twisted and corrupted. Over the last several decades, with the intent of minimizing our Constitution, the idea of a living document has come into play. In a living document, how do we hold our government to the limited delegated authorities that we assigned?

This was intended to be a nation of popular sovereignty. As a sovereign, you and I claim all the authority of any sovereign state in the world. We claim the right of self-defense, immunity from the state, and therefore a right to be tried by a jury of our peers. The intent was the guarantee that the state could not place its heavy hand upon those it was formed to serve.

Our system was designed so that a wrong, a harm, could be reconciled. If you are violated in some form, your recourse would have been to go to the sitting grand jury and make your proper complaint. That institution, as it originally operated, was composed of citizens, just like you and me, who would investigate your complaint without a state official stepping into the process. After fully investigating the matter, it could have been as simple as to propose a solution such as, if you lost a sum of money was the accused willing to remedy that situation?

Along the way we began to lose sight of just how ingenious the founders of this nation were. As we look back in history we could easily find many circumstances, in which the power hungry have usurped and corrupted the rule of law. In doing so they have created a myriad of problems that could not have existed if we would abide our Duty to ourselves, and the doctrine which we laid out .

For instance, at the time of our founding gold and silver with the median form of money. Barter was acceptable and remains so today where in parts of even developed countries such as the US, people still barter for goods and services. Your neighbor may render a service to you, for which you in return we’ll apply your expertise to something that he or she may need.

However, the use of gold, was first prohibited under the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt required that the people turn in their gold. In 1971 Richard Nixon officially took us off the gold standard. Once that took place the price of materials, goods, and services started to skyrocket.

In both cases, the representatives of the people took upon themselves powers that were never granted. I bring this up to associate it with the myriad of presidential executive orders that have become the norm to impose unconstitutional regulations upon the people.

Recently, President Biden wrote an executive order to impose stronger background checks for the purchase of firearms. He had no authority to do so, and through his actions committed a crime against the people in this nation. There is another side to this coin that is missed.

Our first law Declares “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. How should we interpret this other than to say that governments are formed by the hands of the people, and we lay out the authorities for them to execute. By no stretch of the imagination can we say that we’ve given them unlimited power to go in any direction, employ any agenda, or invoke any power that would usurp our sovereignty.

More importantly we must ask the question, when public officials step out of line, that is to say that they’ve gone beyond those limited delegated authorities that we assigned, what mechanism do we employ to bring rogue officials to justice?

The original Constitution COMMANDS that it is only the Militia that has the power and authority “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel Invasions.” That is a lot of power authorized for We the People. Why don’t we use it? Lies, propaganda, ignorance, and ambivalence are some reasons.

If asked the question, how many branches of government are there, without a doubt almost all will say there are three. However, from the standpoint of our unique structure, there are both federal and state executive, legislative, and judicial branches that are strictly government institutions. But in our unique form, wherein the people are sovereign there must be some branches that are strictly controlled by the general population.

We have in this nation, what should have been a completely independent Grand Jury, Petit Jury, and the tools to enforce the decisions of those two branches; militia composed of able bodied men capable of bearing arms for the purpose of “execut[ing], the Laws of the Union, suppress[ing] Insurrections, and repel[ing] Invasions.”

We have lost any desire to maintain and protect our sovereign powers over the state. Instead of mustering our constitutional militia with all the authority recognized in the Constitution, we would much rather cry, whimper, and beg those who impose unlawful powers over us for some mercy. This nation stands at a very crucial point in its existence. Either we act now to “alter or abolish” this government, or our children will certainly suffer our foolishness, and unwillingness to act as lawful citizens.

Bearing in mind our “institutions, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and the history of their development,” we must ask ourselves what direction we have allowed public officials to take that is destroying the foundation of this nation?

I sat on two grand juries. What I learned while being a participant is that the majority display a willingness to violate the rights of their fellow citizens. And the last grand jury I sat on I was involved in some heated arguments with prosecutors. I noted for instance that prosecutors tacked on violations that could not possibly be a part of the case brought before us. In one instance I objected to the conduct of a policeman who arrested a young man because he had a little trinket on his key chain. Long story short, in a case almost identical, the state Supreme Court threw out the conviction and noted that the police violated the rights of the accused.

In the most recent violation of our laws, prosecutor Alvin Bragg convened a grand jury, in a jurisdiction guaranteed to assist him in violating the rights of an individual. This indictment of Donald Trump is the stuff of nightmares. It is what banana republics are made of; prosecute and imprison your political opponents. Bragg brought a case to the grand jury that  had previously been rejected by the DOJ, and the very same office, of which he is a part. In doing so Bragg has sent a warning shot across the bow of our liberty.

Bragg has employed the scheme of “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” By using the tactic of interpreting laws Bragg has brought about an indictment of some 34 charges. In doing so he has claimed that he does not have to name a specific law that the accused has violated. The 6th amendment to the Constitution states very clearly, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;”

There is much written about our right to an unbiased grand jury and Petit jury. It has been noted by people such as Alan Dershowitz that numbers of 85 to 90% of the population apparently are democratic voters who have an intense dislike of the accused in this case. Corruption of the jury system is nothing new. I found this comment by John Adams as far back as 1775 to be most enlightening; “That the high whigs took care to get themselves chosen of the grand juries I don’t believe. Nine tenths of the people were high whigs; and therefore it was not easy to get a grand jury without nine whigs in ten, in it. And the matter would not be much mended by the new act of parliament. The sheriff must return the same set of jurors, court after court, or else his juries would be nine tenths of them high whigs still. Indeed the tories are so envenom’d now with malice, envy, revenge and disappointed ambition, that they would be willing, for what I know, to be jurors for life, in order to give verdicts against the whigs. And many of them would readily do it, I doubt not, without any other law or evidence, than what they found in their own breasts.”

With almost 250 years behind us, we still face many of the issues for which we decided to break the bonds with Great Britain. How could this be the case? We have allowed the judiciary to employ interpretation of our law rather than holding them to confirm acts of the legislature with specific delegated authority. Further to that we have allowed the legislatures to bring forth acts, for which their intent was to place chains on the people they were supposed to serve. In both cases we have failed to uphold our part of the bargain.

In a nation constructed on the principle “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”, we have abandoned the construct of the nation that was designed for the people to maintain their freedom. Self- governance, as it was constructed, so that liberty and justice would prevail.

Thomas Jefferson stated, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” Surely, Trump did not receive an honest application of the Grand Jury, and I do not see him obtaining any other consideration from a trial jury.

However, my concern is not, in particular, for the former president, but rather for the nation itself. For whatever travails I may face, or you may face, or worse still, our children who speak out against the tyrannical state, will do so with no chance of ever receiving a fair trial.

To my mind, this has never been about Donald Trump specifically, but rather a nation wherein the people are allowed to maintain their freedom. Across this nation, while most of us sleep in our ambivalence, there have been numerous people indicted, tried, and sent to prison. Their crimes, in too many cases, are the subject of politically driven prosecutors who are assisted by equally motivated juries. Despicable prosecutors across this nation are allowing felons to run free through our streets, while they bring cases against people who are defending themselves against acts of violence.

This nation, born on the principle of liberty and justice for all, will not survive unless its people enforce their proper authority. I understand, and indeed I’ve learned over the last few decades, that the majority want nothing to do with executing any duty that might keep them free and independent from a burgeoning tyrannical state.

So, it is up to the three percent, perhaps now only the one per cent who are willing to push forward. Who will engage their elected representatives constantly by specifically enumerating the law as it was written, not as it has been interpreted for the benefit of the state. Demanding that they fulfill there are lots of office by adhering to the rules laid out in both the federal and state constitutions. I believe that time grows short for this nation. While some believed that electing people on the local level is the answer to our problems, I maintained that electing those who are ignorant of the law will resolve nothing.

The rule of law is as it was originally written. It must be read and executed as it was originally enacted. The most critical part of our law rests on the fact that we permanently institutionalized the body of the people as the militia with the sole authority “to execute the Laws of the Union.” It must be applied and enforced with that purpose in mind.