How America Was Lost

Paul Craig Roberts

“No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power, position, and prestige." Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law.

Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige are the ingredients of national security and that national security trumps law. In the United States democracy takes a back seat to “national security,” a prerogative of the executive branch of government.

National security is where the executive branch hides its crimes against law, both domestic and international, its crimes against the Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both at home and abroad, and its secret agendas that it knows that the American public would never support.

“National security” is the cloak that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is unaccountable.

Without accountable government there is no civil liberty and no democracy except for the sham voting that existed in the Soviet Union and now exists in the US.

There have been periods in US history, such as President Lincoln’s war to prevent secession, World War I, and World War II, when accountable government was impaired. These were short episodes of the Constitution’s violation, and the Constitution was reinstated in the aftermath of the wars. However, since the Clinton regime, the accountability of government has been declining for more than two decades, longer than the three wars combined.

In law there is the concept of adverse possession, popularly known as “squatters’ rights.” A non-owner who succeeds in occupying a piece of property or some one else’s right for a certain time without being evicted enjoys the ownership title conveyed to him. The reasoning is that by not defending his rights, the owner showed his disinterest and in effect gave his rights away.

Americans have not defended their rights conveyed by the US Constitution for the duration of the terms of three presidents. The Clinton regime was not held accountable for its illegal attack on Serbia. The Bush regime was not held accountable for its illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama regime was not held accountable for its renewed attack on Afghanistan and its illegal attacks on Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen, and by its proxies on Syria.

We also have other strictly illegal and unconstitutional acts of government for which the government has not been held accountable. The Bush regimes’ acts of torture, indefinite detention, and warrantless spying, and the Obama regime’s acts of indefinite detention, warrantless spying, and murder of US citizens without due process. As the Obama regime lies through its teeth, we have no way of knowing whether torture is still practiced.

If these numerous criminal acts of the US government spread over the terms of three presidents pass into history as unchallenged events, the US government will have acquired squatters’ rights in lawlessness. The US Constitution will be, as President George W. Bush is reported to have declared, “a scrap of paper.”

Lawlessness is the hallmark of tyranny enforced by the police state. In a police state law is not a protector of rights but a weapon in the hands of government. [see Roberts & Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions] The accused has no recourse to the accusation, which does not require evidence presented to a court. The accused is guilty by accusation alone and can be shot in the back of the head, as under Stalin, or blown up by a drone missile, as under Obama.

As a person aware of the long struggle against the tyrannical state, I have been amazed and disheartened by the acceptance not only by the insouciant American public, but also by law schools, bar associations, media, Congress and the Supreme Court of the executive branch’s claim to be above both law and the US Constitution.

As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book about how the law was lost, liberals and conservatives chasing after their favorite devils, such as child abusers and drug pushers, and prosecutors, judges, and police devoted to conviction and not to justice, have gradually eroded over time the concept of law as a protection of the innocent, With the atmosphere of threat created by 9/11, the final destruction of the protective features of law was quickly achieved in the name of making us safe from terrorists.

The fact that we are no longer safe from our own government did not register.

This is how liberty was lost, and America with it.

Can liberty be regained?

CONTINUE . . .

 

What will the Federal Govt do? What's it's been gearing up to do for a long time.

Protect it's corporatist system and tyrannical powers at all cost.

The DHS has been busy militarizing and federalizing state and local police agencies (centralizing power) through it's "fusion centers". The NSA has been gathering as much information as possible on every one of us that could be used against us.

We all know how much the Feds want to kill the second amendment and confiscate our guns and ammo.

The Feds have been arming themselves to the teeth and centralizing police power while trying every which way to disarm us.

I think maybe the feds are pushing for a different kind of war. A divide and conquer war against the people. While the people are all busy spending our energy fighting amongst ourselves along racial, political, religious and class lines the feds can swoop in and cut off the heads of any real resistance to their tyranny.

If you were to look up "divide and conquer" in the tyrant's playbook of holding onto power it would be # 1.

It's called "order out of chaos". We've seen it play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya and now we're seeing how the game is played once more in Syria and possibly we'll see it playing out here as well in the not to distant future.

 

Rupert really has his claws into you doesn't he?

Do you ever read anything that isn't owned and controlled by News Corp? No offense. But we aren't witnessing the end of global corporatism we're witnessing the beginning of global fascism. The "globalists" are pulling out all the stops and sheering us (transferring our national wealth to their transnational selves) but good on the way down. When we hit bottom then the velvet glove comes off to expose the iron fist.

This time on a "global" scale.

Our "fate" as OR says is in the hands of our police and military. If they choose to follow orders instead of honoring their oath we're gonna be in a hard place. The "international community" isn't going to come riding in on white horses to save us from our tyrannical govt because the "international community" wants all our wealth in their pockets and our liberty crushed.

See THIS

 

I'm in favor of state's rights and nullification 100% but it's "your side" that's driving us towards civil war by convincing yourselves that anyone who stands by our founding principles and the constitution must be dangerous extremists.