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The Biggest Mistake America Has Ever Made
The Biggest Mistake America Has Ever Made
By Majik
5 Dec 2024 7:25 am in No Holds Barred Political Forum
5 Dec 2024 7:25 am
The biggest mistake America has ever made since the nation’s founding was the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state. If the American people are ever going to achieve a genuinely free society, a necessary prerequisite is the dismantling of the national-security establishment and the restoration of America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
America’s national-security state is a gigantic military-intelligence entity that is divided into three major parts — the Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Agency (NSA). To a certain extent, the FBI can also be considered to be part of this massive apparatus. Since the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the Cold War and America’s anticommunist crusade, the national-security establishment has become the dominant, controlling branch of the federal government.
One of the best books that has ever been written on America’s national-security state is National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, a professor of law at Tufts University and a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I wish every American would read this book because it holds a key to getting our nation back on the right track.
Glennon’s thesis is a simple but ominous one: It is the national-security sector of the federal government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is actually running the federal government. It permits the other three branches — the executive, legislative, and judicial branches — to have the appearance of being in charge. That enables the American people to have a sense that everything is as it always has been, but the reality is that it’s the national-security branch that is in charge.
Continued....
America’s national-security state is a gigantic military-intelligence entity that is divided into three major parts — the Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Agency (NSA). To a certain extent, the FBI can also be considered to be part of this massive apparatus. Since the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the Cold War and America’s anticommunist crusade, the national-security establishment has become the dominant, controlling branch of the federal government.
One of the best books that has ever been written on America’s national-security state is National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, a professor of law at Tufts University and a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I wish every American would read this book because it holds a key to getting our nation back on the right track.
Glennon’s thesis is a simple but ominous one: It is the national-security sector of the federal government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is actually running the federal government. It permits the other three branches — the executive, legislative, and judicial branches — to have the appearance of being in charge. That enables the American people to have a sense that everything is as it always has been, but the reality is that it’s the national-security branch that is in charge.
Continued....
5 Dec 2024 7:26 am
Limited Powers versus Omnipotent Powers
The difference between a limited-government republic and a national-security state is the difference between day and night. Under a limited-government republic, the federal government’s powers were extremely limited. In fact, the only powers the federal government could legally exercise were those enumerated in the Constitution. There was a relatively small military force, and since it fell within the executive branch of the federal government, its powers were limited to the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
The last thing that the American people wanted was a government that wielded omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers. They understood that people would not be free under that type of government. People would inevitably have their rights and freedoms restricted and even destroyed by a government wielding such powers. In other words, the more restricted the powers, the freer the people would be. The more unrestricted the powers, the less free the people would be.
Thus, if the Constitution had called for a national-security state form of government, there is no doubt whatsoever that our American ancestors would have rejected it. That would have meant that the United States would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, another type of governmental system under which the federal government’s powers were so weak that it didn’t even have the power to tax.
That’s what Americans wanted — a federal government with extremely weak powers. They understood what modern-day Americans do not understand — that the greatest danger to their freedom and well-being lay not in some foreign threat but rather with their very own government.
Even with the limited-powers concept under the Constitution, our American ancestors were still not satisfied. As a condition of approving the Constitution, they demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights, which actually should be called a Bill of Prohibitions. That’s because those amendments do not give people rights, any more than the Constitution does. Our ancestors understood that people’s rights come from nature and God, as the Declaration of Independence had pointed out. The Bill of Rights was designed to prohibit federal officials from infringing on or destroying natural, God-given rights that preexist government.
In other words, our ancestors understood that the federal government would inevitably attract the type of people who would use governmental force to destroy people’s rights. Thus, they wanted the Bill of Rights enacted to send a clear message to those kind of people — a message that stated that the federal government lacked the power to destroy the rights, lives, liberties, and properties of the American people.
continued....
The difference between a limited-government republic and a national-security state is the difference between day and night. Under a limited-government republic, the federal government’s powers were extremely limited. In fact, the only powers the federal government could legally exercise were those enumerated in the Constitution. There was a relatively small military force, and since it fell within the executive branch of the federal government, its powers were limited to the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
The last thing that the American people wanted was a government that wielded omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers. They understood that people would not be free under that type of government. People would inevitably have their rights and freedoms restricted and even destroyed by a government wielding such powers. In other words, the more restricted the powers, the freer the people would be. The more unrestricted the powers, the less free the people would be.
Thus, if the Constitution had called for a national-security state form of government, there is no doubt whatsoever that our American ancestors would have rejected it. That would have meant that the United States would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, another type of governmental system under which the federal government’s powers were so weak that it didn’t even have the power to tax.
That’s what Americans wanted — a federal government with extremely weak powers. They understood what modern-day Americans do not understand — that the greatest danger to their freedom and well-being lay not in some foreign threat but rather with their very own government.
Even with the limited-powers concept under the Constitution, our American ancestors were still not satisfied. As a condition of approving the Constitution, they demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights, which actually should be called a Bill of Prohibitions. That’s because those amendments do not give people rights, any more than the Constitution does. Our ancestors understood that people’s rights come from nature and God, as the Declaration of Independence had pointed out. The Bill of Rights was designed to prohibit federal officials from infringing on or destroying natural, God-given rights that preexist government.
In other words, our ancestors understood that the federal government would inevitably attract the type of people who would use governmental force to destroy people’s rights. Thus, they wanted the Bill of Rights enacted to send a clear message to those kind of people — a message that stated that the federal government lacked the power to destroy the rights, lives, liberties, and properties of the American people.
continued....
5 Dec 2024 7:27 am
A Remarkable System
Given that governments are ruled by human beings, no governmental system is ever going to work perfectly. In fact, as everyone knows, America’s founding governmental system had some major flaws from the very beginning, with slavery being the biggest one and with secondary ones like the violation of women’s rights and tariffs. Nonetheless, by 1890, Americans had brought into existence the most unique and freest economic system that mankind has ever seen — a system based on free markets, voluntary charity, private property, and limited government that any libertarian today would marvel about.
Imagine: No income taxation or IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, minimum-wage laws, (few) economic regulations, Federal Reserve System, paper money (gold coins and silver coins were the official money), public (i.e., government) schooling systems, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI, massive military-intelligence establishment, foreign military bases, foreign interventionism, (limited) immigration controls, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, drug laws, and gun control.
That was one remarkable system. From 1890 to 1910, America was the most prosperous, most charitable, and most peaceful nation in history. If our nation had followed that trajectory into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the result would have been unbelievably incredible in terms of freedom, peace, prosperity, charity, and harmony with the people of the world.
Alas, it was not to be. In the twentieth century, Americans converted the federal government to a welfare state, a regulated, managed economy, and a national-security state, abandoning America’s founding foreign policy of noninterventionism.
While Americans have been taught to believe that the military-intelligence part of the government falls within the executive branch, such is not the case. That’s the way things were when the federal government was a limited-government republic. But once the conversion to a national-security state took place, the acquisition of overwhelming power by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA effectively brought into existence a fourth branch of the federal government — the national-security branch, which is, as Michael Glennon details so well in his book, the branch in charge of the federal government, with the other three branches deferring to its predominate role within the government.
One big problem is that every American has been born and raised under our national-security state system. Therefore, since Americans are inculcated with the notion that they are a free people, they do not question the national-security state form of government. Instead, they are convinced that it’s part and parcel of a free society, notwithstanding the fact that such authoritarian and dictatorial regimes as Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, and many others are also national-security states. They all have been inculcated with the notion that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are necessary for their safety and security.
continued...
Given that governments are ruled by human beings, no governmental system is ever going to work perfectly. In fact, as everyone knows, America’s founding governmental system had some major flaws from the very beginning, with slavery being the biggest one and with secondary ones like the violation of women’s rights and tariffs. Nonetheless, by 1890, Americans had brought into existence the most unique and freest economic system that mankind has ever seen — a system based on free markets, voluntary charity, private property, and limited government that any libertarian today would marvel about.
Imagine: No income taxation or IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, minimum-wage laws, (few) economic regulations, Federal Reserve System, paper money (gold coins and silver coins were the official money), public (i.e., government) schooling systems, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI, massive military-intelligence establishment, foreign military bases, foreign interventionism, (limited) immigration controls, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, drug laws, and gun control.
That was one remarkable system. From 1890 to 1910, America was the most prosperous, most charitable, and most peaceful nation in history. If our nation had followed that trajectory into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the result would have been unbelievably incredible in terms of freedom, peace, prosperity, charity, and harmony with the people of the world.
Alas, it was not to be. In the twentieth century, Americans converted the federal government to a welfare state, a regulated, managed economy, and a national-security state, abandoning America’s founding foreign policy of noninterventionism.
While Americans have been taught to believe that the military-intelligence part of the government falls within the executive branch, such is not the case. That’s the way things were when the federal government was a limited-government republic. But once the conversion to a national-security state took place, the acquisition of overwhelming power by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA effectively brought into existence a fourth branch of the federal government — the national-security branch, which is, as Michael Glennon details so well in his book, the branch in charge of the federal government, with the other three branches deferring to its predominate role within the government.
One big problem is that every American has been born and raised under our national-security state system. Therefore, since Americans are inculcated with the notion that they are a free people, they do not question the national-security state form of government. Instead, they are convinced that it’s part and parcel of a free society, notwithstanding the fact that such authoritarian and dictatorial regimes as Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, and many others are also national-security states. They all have been inculcated with the notion that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are necessary for their safety and security.
continued...
5 Dec 2024 7:27 am
Free society is never free from the riggers of evolving in plain sight equally timed apart since conceived, not birth to dead but total population alive between events of inception of ancestral lineages to end of great great grandchildren being conceived the rotation of the planet that event arrives.
Just didn't happen this rotation "yet".
Tomorrow is called 7 different days a week 52 times a year and living never exceeds time each reproduction gets adapting to the moment this rotation as an ever changing form arrived a fertilized cell.
All the reasonable doubts created since dawn of civilization hasn't changed that function.
Just didn't happen this rotation "yet".
Tomorrow is called 7 different days a week 52 times a year and living never exceeds time each reproduction gets adapting to the moment this rotation as an ever changing form arrived a fertilized cell.
All the reasonable doubts created since dawn of civilization hasn't changed that function.
5 Dec 2024 7:28 am
Lessons from Abroad
Sometimes it is instructive to consider matters in foreign regimes to see what’s wrong with our own country. Russia, for example, recently released a Wall Street Journal reporter named Evan Gershkovich. He had been writing critical articles about Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine when he was suddenly arrested in Russia on charges of espionage. After a secret trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was released as part of a big prisoner trade between the United States and Russia.
U.S. officials and the mainstream press correctly pointed out the kangaroo nature of Gershkovich’s trial. They pointed out that in the United States, thanks to the Bill of Rights, trials have to be held in public. Moreover, the accused here in the United States is entitled to have a jury, rather than a judge or commission, decide whether one is guilty.
What these American critics forget, however, is that while those procedural protections apply to America’s federal-court system, they do not apply to the national-security establishment’s judicial system that was established at its military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That judicial system mirrors the system used in Russia.
For example, at Gitmo the speedy-trial requirement in the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply. People who are accused of terrorism can be imprisoned for life without a trial. And if a trial is ever held, the accused is not accorded a jury trial, as the Bill of Rights guarantees; instead a military commission decides guilt or innocence.
Moreover, unlike the federal-court system, defendants in the Pentagon-CIA-NSA system can be tortured into confessing to a crime. Witnesses also can be tortured into providing evidence against the accused. Unlike the federal-court system, hearsay is admissible to help convict the accused. While the federal judiciary has created the appearance of establishing jurisdiction over the judicial system at Gitmo, the people who have been incarcerated at Gitmo for 20 years without a trial know that U.S. judicial control is just a veneer.
continued...
Sometimes it is instructive to consider matters in foreign regimes to see what’s wrong with our own country. Russia, for example, recently released a Wall Street Journal reporter named Evan Gershkovich. He had been writing critical articles about Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine when he was suddenly arrested in Russia on charges of espionage. After a secret trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was released as part of a big prisoner trade between the United States and Russia.
U.S. officials and the mainstream press correctly pointed out the kangaroo nature of Gershkovich’s trial. They pointed out that in the United States, thanks to the Bill of Rights, trials have to be held in public. Moreover, the accused here in the United States is entitled to have a jury, rather than a judge or commission, decide whether one is guilty.
What these American critics forget, however, is that while those procedural protections apply to America’s federal-court system, they do not apply to the national-security establishment’s judicial system that was established at its military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That judicial system mirrors the system used in Russia.
For example, at Gitmo the speedy-trial requirement in the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply. People who are accused of terrorism can be imprisoned for life without a trial. And if a trial is ever held, the accused is not accorded a jury trial, as the Bill of Rights guarantees; instead a military commission decides guilt or innocence.
Moreover, unlike the federal-court system, defendants in the Pentagon-CIA-NSA system can be tortured into confessing to a crime. Witnesses also can be tortured into providing evidence against the accused. Unlike the federal-court system, hearsay is admissible to help convict the accused. While the federal judiciary has created the appearance of establishing jurisdiction over the judicial system at Gitmo, the people who have been incarcerated at Gitmo for 20 years without a trial know that U.S. judicial control is just a veneer.
continued...
5 Dec 2024 7:30 am
Continued at....
https://mises.org/power-market/biggest- ... -ever-made
So, how can we change this ?
https://mises.org/power-market/biggest- ... -ever-made
So, how can we change this ?
5 Dec 2024 7:32 am
Majik » 05 Dec 2024, 8:25 am » wrote: ↑ The biggest mistake America has ever made since the nation’s founding was the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state. If the American people are ever going to achieve a genuinely free society, a necessary prerequisite is the dismantling of the national-security establishment and the restoration of America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
America’s national-security state is a gigantic military-intelligence entity that is divided into three major parts — the Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Agency (NSA). To a certain extent, the FBI can also be considered to be part of this massive apparatus. Since the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the Cold War and America’s anticommunist crusade, the national-security establishment has become the dominant, controlling branch of the federal government.
One of the best books that has ever been written on America’s national-security state is National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, a professor of law at Tufts University and a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I wish every American would read this book because it holds a key to getting our nation back on the right track.
Glennon’s thesis is a simple but ominous one: It is the national-security sector of the federal government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is actually running the federal government. It permits the other three branches — the executive, legislative, and judicial branches — to have the appearance of being in charge. That enables the American people to have a sense that everything is as it always has been, but the reality is that it’s the national-security branch that is in charge.
Continued....
America was mostly that up until World War 2 .
Then after WW2 we got into the "Cold War" & next 50 years and endless arms race with the former Soviet Union
5 Dec 2024 7:32 am
Stop singling out America, it is every generation gap of this species practicing the same deception daily. Correct corruption or corruption eliminates the corrupted taking each other out on the premise of managing time more efficiently than adapting to the moment here since conceived so far in total sum left living, now.
Right?
Right?
5 Dec 2024 7:34 am
Who brought us to this point?Majik » 05 Dec 2024, 8:25 am » wrote: ↑ The biggest mistake America has ever made since the nation’s founding was the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state. If the American people are ever going to achieve a genuinely free society, a necessary prerequisite is the dismantling of the national-security establishment and the restoration of America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
America’s national-security state is a gigantic military-intelligence entity that is divided into three major parts — the Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Agency (NSA). To a certain extent, the FBI can also be considered to be part of this massive apparatus. Since the late 1940s and early 1950s as part of the Cold War and America’s anticommunist crusade, the national-security establishment has become the dominant, controlling branch of the federal government.
One of the best books that has ever been written on America’s national-security state is National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, a professor of law at Tufts University and a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I wish every American would read this book because it holds a key to getting our nation back on the right track.
Glennon’s thesis is a simple but ominous one: It is the national-security sector of the federal government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is actually running the federal government. It permits the other three branches — the executive, legislative, and judicial branches — to have the appearance of being in charge. That enables the American people to have a sense that everything is as it always has been, but the reality is that it’s the national-security branch that is in charge.
Continued....
5 Dec 2024 7:36 am
Everyone staying in character.
5 Dec 2024 7:50 am
Agreed.TwoIfByTea » 05 Dec 2024, 8:32 am » wrote: ↑ America was mostly that up until World War 2 .
Then after WW2 we got into the "Cold War" & next 50 years and endless arms race with the former Soviet Union
A coup against "We The People" of epic proportions took place on November 22 1963.
When The National security state took power and has never relinquished it .....since.
and has in fact spread and grown their poison globally ...now.
While we work hard for our money and keep financing their perpetual coup.
5 Dec 2024 7:51 am
Really?Majik » 05 Dec 2024, 8:50 am » wrote: ↑ Agreed.
A coup against "We The People" of epic proportions took place on November 22 1963.
When The National security state took power and has never relinquished it .....since.
and has in fact spread and grown their poison globally ...now.
While we work hard for our money and keep financing their perpetual coup.
5 Dec 2024 7:53 am
I'm singling it out because it's that coup in 1963 that has not only affected America and Americans but the entire world.31stArrival » 05 Dec 2024, 8:32 am » wrote: ↑ Stop singling out America, it is every generation gap of this species practicing the same deception daily. Correct corruption or corruption eliminates the corrupted taking each other out on the premise of managing time more efficiently than adapting to the moment here since conceived so far in total sum left living, now.
Right?
No?
5 Dec 2024 8:00 am
Now, that's a good question ......
Except that you will try and Blame a single party....The Republicans ....
Which is very short sighted ...
and very inaccurate...
because it wasn't a single political party....
what do you believe ?
5 Dec 2024 8:00 am
I understand why you did it since it was done. Relative time management of the moment doesn't follow the evolving process naturally limiting ancestors to occupying space as an ever changing form arrived their personal fertilized cell.Majik » 05 Dec 2024, 8:53 am » wrote: ↑ I'm singling it out because it's that coup in 1963 that has not only affected America and Americans but the entire world.
No?
Everything is connected on the universal scale of perpetual motion limited to perpetual balancing outcomes never same total sum twice. Humanity uses this rule of 72 against people daily in economic theories inverting the evolving process to be governed by hindsight daily.
Noon to midnight is today mentally and legally the second half of tomorrow already here midnight to noon. Dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn same rotation each rotation life is never same total sum as before.
Get out of your mind educated since birth by those promising life isn't self evident time in your own skin. Break the power of suggesting life isn't self evident time adapting equally here.
It is the only non violent way to rescue this species from itself.
5 Dec 2024 8:01 am
5 Dec 2024 8:03 am
Shhhh..answer the question, piece of ****Majik » 05 Dec 2024, 9:00 am » wrote: ↑ Now, that's a good question ......
Except that you will try and Blame a single party....The Republicans ....
Which is very short sighted ...
and very inaccurate...
because it wasn't a single political party....
what do you believe ?
5 Dec 2024 8:07 am
That may have worked before the digital age and the advent of The Internet and the Online world.31stArrival » 05 Dec 2024, 9:00 am » wrote: ↑ I understand why you did it since it was done. Relative time management off the moment doesn't follow the evolving process naturally limiting ancestors to occupying space as an ever changing form arrived their personal fertilized cell.
Everything is connected on the universal scale of perpetual motion limited to perpetual balancing outcomes never same total sum twice. Humanity uses this rule of 72 against people daily in economic theories inverting the evolving process to be governed by hindsight daily.
Noon to midnight is today mentally and legally the second half of tomorrow already here midnight to noon. Dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn same rotation each rotation life is never same total sum as before.
Get out of your mind educated since birth by those promising life isn't self evident time in your own skin. Break the power of suggesting life isn't self evident time adapting equally here.
It is the only non violent way to rescue this species from itself.
But not now....
a non-violent solution cannot be achieved now .
Unfortunately.
5 Dec 2024 8:07 am
I took the liberty to answer for him, even though he may disagree with my answer as much as you ignored it.
5 Dec 2024 8:09 am
Paranoia and Narcissism.....
by a small cabal of Americans working against the Interests of "We The People".....
because they no longer trusted the electorate and decided to bypass the electorate altogether....
@Blackvegetable
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