I believe no one can put forth a successful argument which justifies why any form of man-made government should have the right to give itself priority over the needs and rights of people. The possession of might does not justify such oppression. Nor does the advancing of various forms of philosophical, political, economic, or theological theories of life justify such oppression … although, unfortunately, those who seek power frequently confuse rationalization with authentic justification. In fact, for any individual to seek authority over another – i.e., the so-called 'leadership' quest -- is often an indication that some form of pathology is present. Yes, we each have a duty of care with respect to contributing to and protecting the welfare of others – both people we love as well as the stranger. However, such duties of care have nothing to do with seeking power and authority over other human beings. Even a parent cannot justify seeking to control a child for the sake of control and authority, but, rather, this must be done in conjunction with principles of justice which respect and secure an individual's integrity as a person and not as a piece of chattel, whether within a family or within society in general. No democratic form of government gives up anything to come into existence as an institution. In fact such an institution could not have come into existence without the participation and sacrifice of people. It is the government which owes a duty of care to those who have expressed willingness to forego certain actions in exchange for a faithful enactment of that duty of care. When governments abandon such a duty, then, the people are no longer required to obey such a government, and although such governments may seek to use threats, various forms of duress, and outright physical force in order to perpetuate their dereliction of duty, this sort of activity is understood by all people to give expression to acts of tyranny, corruption, and treason against the people. The Constitution is a social contract of a people amongst themselves. If the executors of this Constitution – that is, government officials, representatives of the people, and the various systems of court – should betray the underlying contract, then, the Constitution stands null and void. Each generation is required to reaffirm this compact – not in terms of how things were done in the 18th century – but in terms of the basic meaning of a constitution which gives expression to a promise to the people who exist subsequent to the formation of such a social compact that their rights and powers will be secured, protected, promoted, and realized by the executors of the constitution. The glue which holds such a compact together is neither legal nor institutional nor governmental, but, rather, the necessary glue is the willingness of people to invest their trust in a process that does not seek to oppress them. The executors of government are like the executors of a will who may get paid to serve as executors but they do not have any right to change the nature of the will nor to use their position as executors to serve their own interests independently of the person or people who drew up the will. The purpose of the executors is to bring about the provisions of the will which were written to serve the people being provided for in the will and which were not meant to serve the interests of the people who are performing the function of being executors of that will. Unfortunately, government officials all too frequently have behaved like the executor of a will who, without authority or justification, have introduced all manner of foreign, alien, inappropriate elements into that document which specify -- although not part of the original will -- that, nonetheless, the will must now serve the interests of the executors. Considered from another direction, the government, independent of the people, is an empty, lifeless container which has form and nothing else. The container has no rights of its own; it has no life of its own; it has no purposes of its own; it has no desires of its own. People become citizens by breathing life into the aforementioned inert container through their act of basic trust which proclaims that by investing political and legal life in such a container, the container will not seek to become an autonomous entity intent on oppressing the very individuals who give it life. Life is breathed into the container with the purpose of setting in motion the principles and processes inherent in the form of the container (placed there by people) that are intended to serve the people who are breathing life into such a container. Like the Disney version of the 'sorcerer's apprentice', the apprentice -- in the form of government officials -- has decided to pick up the wand (the Constitution) of the conjuror when the Sorcerer (known, otherwise, as the people) momentarily leaves the room (i.e., the halls of government). The sorcerer assumes that the apprentice will behave in accordance with the rules and principles of ethical decorum by which sorcerers govern themselves. Instead, the apprentice has taken it upon himself or herself to wave the sorcerer's wand about and mumble arcane phrases as if he/she knew what he/she was doing and, all of a sudden, corporations, among other ghoulish entities, have been conjured up to act as if they were real human beings (just like the water-bearing mops in the Disney cartoon). Yet, these nightmarish monstrosities are completely devoid of any semblance of soul and are only intent on obeying their prime directive of making profits for the share holders (symbolized in the cartoon by the dumping of more and more water) irrespective of what damage this mindless pursuit may do to others, and, in the process, unleashing tremendous, unruly and ungovernable destructive powers onto the kingdom. When Mickey Mouse finally was caught in the act by the returning sorcerer -- after things had gotten out of control -- Mickey was cute in his embarrassment, knowing that he had exceeded his role and function as nothing but an apprentice to the real source of power (which in our political morality tale represents the people). Unfortunately, government officials (including Supreme Court Justices) who have been caught in the act of waving the Constitutional wand about in an attempt to serve themselves are not nearly so cute – especially given that they seem to have no sense of embarrassment or shame with respect to the manner in which they have behaved so irresponsibly and unethically as a trusted executor of the will of the people in the absence of the sorcerer. Moreover, just as it is only the sorcerer who could restore order to the mythical kingdom of Mickey Mouse through a wise exercise of power and proper use of the wand (i.e., the Constitution), so too, it is only the people who have the wisdom and power to stop the destructive activities of government officials -- as well as stop the activities of the demonic corporations which such officials have spawned and set loose on the world through the ineptitude of the apprentices who were fooling around with the Constitution in the absence of the people. Unfortunately, governments -- like corporations who mysteriously have become persons – have, somehow, arrogated to themselves the right to exist as autonomous entities that owe no rights to the people but only owe allegiance to their own self-serving agendas. People – not in the sense of legal fictions created by clever layers and politicians to be able to corrupt the Constitution – but people as real, living expressions of biological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual being who have rights and powers guaranteed to them by the Constitution … rights which were not guaranteed to corporations. A corporation is not a human being. Like government, it is an inert container which is given life by the people who do so on the grounds that such a container – or, more specifically, the individuals who have been appointed to serve as executors of its principles -- will not be permitted (by the judicious and wise activities of its executors) to betray the trust through which the corporation has been brought into existence. However, when corporations seek to thwart, obstruct, undermine, constrain, diminish, abolish, or oppress the interests and will of the only beings on this planet who deserve and are entitled to the term "person", then, the executors of corporations act in accordance with the same logic as do the executors of governments who operate under the delusion that they are the reason why a Constitution has been written. Unfortunately, the executors of government have betrayed actual biological people by permitting corporations to become 'persons' and to give them constitutional standing to assert their claims that government must serve the interests of such corporations as 'persons' rather than as purely economic entities that have no constitutional standing in the compact which was established among human beings as biological individuals of worth and integrity and not as institutions of a purely derivative, legal nature. People existed before corporations. Corporations, like governments, should serve at the pleasure of all the people, and not just some of them. -------------------------- I believe that much of what has taken place in government – both on a federal level and on a state level – give expression to unconstitutional activities. These unconstitutional activities have shaped virtually every aspect of life in America. The First Amendment rights of people have persistently been ignored as governments and the Supreme Court have sought to establish ideological equivalents to religion and force these ideological systems upon the people. The Ninth and Tenth Amendment rights of the people have consistently been ignored by both government and the Supreme Court. The 'involuntary servitude' clause of the Thirteenth Amendment has repeatedly been violated as governments and the Supreme Court have sought to induce the people to live in accordance with purposes, methods, values, and ideas which have relegated the people to a status of servants to government or judiciary programs of public policy. The aspirations for additional forms of republican self-governance have consistently been stymied by those in government who feel threatened by the idea that people should be able to exercise power to run their lives in mutually agreeable ways that are independent of government. Out of control limited liability corporations, a despoiled environment, compulsory education whose costs are ever increasing despite diminishing returns, poverty, a huge national debt -- which, among other things, has rendered the people vulnerable to the agendas of foreign governments, a health care system which is a source of embarrassment with respect to the tens of millions of people who must survive without adequate health care and which places many others in imminent danger of financial collapse, endless wars, homelessness, the best democracy money can buy, a Supreme Court system which seeks to impose its constitutional delusions onto the people, government officials who often are at the behest of special interest groups both through lobbyists as well as through campaign contributions, elections which are far from democratic either with respect to process or results, elected officials who often only represent themselves and/or are engaged in endless rounds of partisan bickering like quarreling children, a troubled tax system which exists largely for the purpose of subsidizing the defense industry and paying interest on an ever-increasing national debt, a decaying and increasingly unreliable infrastructure … the foregoing issues and many more are what have been bequeathed to us by a system of governance which has taken the potential and promise of 1776 and almost completely has destroyed and corrupted that promise by pursuing courses of action which are consistently and persistently unconstitutional. The Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary do not have a right to impose upon the people their ideologically driven ideas about justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare, or individual liberties. The people ought to be working this out among themselves, in accordance with principles of republican self-governance, arrangements that are not vulnerable to the self-serving attempts of either presidents, members of Congress, or the Judiciary to undermine such republican efforts. Grand juries work better than government. Trial juries work better than government. Both of these are non-elected expressions of republican government which are independent of, but work in association with, government institutions. I propose that there needs to be a new amendment added to the Constitution. This amendment would give expression to the establishment of a form of republican government which would serve a very much needed function in America – the oversight of government on behalf of the people. This amendment would give expression to the principles inherent in the Preamble to the Constitution, as well as to the constitutional guarantee of republican governance, as well as to the right of the people to be free of the government's attempt to establish ideological-equivalents to religion through public policy, as well as to the provisions of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, as well as to the right to be free of all forms of 'involuntary servitude' which governments and the Supreme Court devise through unconstitutional abuses of power, as well as to the protections of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The proposed amendment might be referred to as the Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury Amendment. It would be modeled on the already existing form of grand jury but with expanded powers … powers which are in keeping with not only the constitutional guarantee of republican government, but, more importantly, powers which are in keeping with the potential scope of both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and which consistently have been denied to the people through the arbitrary fiats of both government and the Supreme Court as has been pointed out in some detail in Part 1 of this essay. None of the three branches of government has been given express authority to oversee the workings of government. Rather each, in its own way, carries out certain functions within the provisions of the Constitution. Congress gets to make laws which, supposedly, are in pursuance of the Constitution. In addition, among other things, Congress gets to declare war. The President gets to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, but this does not, it should be added, make the President Commander in Chief of the people. The Executive Branch also gets to affirm or veto laws which are made by Congress – or, more specifically, according to Article 1, Section 7, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution: "Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. … If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law." The Supreme Court is given jurisdiction to consider whether, in its opinion, Congress or the Executive Branch are operating in compliance with what allegedly is meant by 'being in pursuance of the Constitution'. Also, somewhat ironically, the Supreme Court also gets to pass judgment on whether past incarnations of the Supreme Court were functioning constitutionally, and, in a manner which has disquieting ramifications, the Supreme Court has, for more than two hundred years, gone on record and openly admitted that various decisions by different Supreme Court Justices were unconstitutional and needed to be overruled, and as a result, raises the question of whether anyone serving on the Supreme Court actually knows what he or she is doing in a way that can be clearly and convincingly justified to the people. In any event, the Constitution has not given any of the branches of government express powers of oversight through which to monitor whether the interests, rights, liberties, powers, privileges, and immunities of the people are being secured, protected, and advanced by government. Although, in practice -- through the doctrine of judicial review -- the Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to make judgments about whether the different branches of government, including state governments, were acting in accordance with the idea of being in pursuance of the Constitution, and, in passing, this has affected the rights of individuals (sometimes constructively and sometimes destructively), there is nothing in the Constitution which gives exclusive rights and powers to the Supreme Court to provide the function of oversight to determine whether the people's interests are being served. In fact, individual citizens as private third parties are rarely given constitutional standing before the Supreme Court. Instead, the Supreme Court has tended to view itself as guardians of what the Constitution does, or does not, permit in the sense of a structural process rather than in terms of seeking to establish substantive outcomes of that process. Notwithstanding the foregoing considerations, in practice, structure and substantive issues are often hard to disentangle. Whatever the functions of the different branches of government may be under the Constitution, the people are much better able to look after their own interests, rights, powers, privileges, and immunities than are any of the branches of government. In fact, the different branches of government often suffer various kinds of conflict of interest with respect to both, on the one hand, serving the interests of the people and, on the other hand, serving the interests of government. The proposed Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury Amendment would consist of one national, federal grand jury, and 50 state grand juries, and each would have jurisdiction in their respective areas. They would all be funded by public monies. Each grand jury would consist of members who would be drawn from a pool of prospective participants who represent a cross-section of the population: women, men, rich, poor, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, the non-religious, blue-color workers, executives, Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Whites, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and so on. Moreover, every effort would be made to ensure that the actual grand juries would actively reflect such a cross-section of individuals. An initial 'Selection Committee' -- which would serve strictly as an organizer of what would be, in effect, a process of selection involving a designated pool of randomly selected candidates – is to be determined by a lottery involving the 50 smallest high schools in America (the smaller the school, the harder it becomes for 'outsiders' to tamper with the process of organizing the truly random selection of grand jurors.) There would be one high school from each state involved in this process. The designated high school in each state would involve mostly students (with some minimal faculty assistance) to select a pool of candidates of 100 people from their states who satisfied the basic criteria for serving on the proposed Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury and who would be willing to serve on such a grand jury for a period of two years. From this pool of candidates, the students and faculty would hold an open, public draw in which the names of two candidates would be selected from that pool in a blind manner, and these individuals would be the state's candidates for serving as representatives to the National Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury. Subsequently, the 50 selected high schools would also go about establishing a pool of candidates, in a similarly random fashion, consisting of individuals who resided in each county in the state where the high school was located. The designated high school would proceed to have a open, public blind draw in which candidates would be drawn until every county in the state was represented. The term of service would be for two years and could not be repeated. People whose circumstances were such that they were not in a position to give two years of public service would be excused without having to show cause. Only people who were willing to offer such public service would be included. The qualifications for serving could be roughly similar to what goes on with regular grand juries. The participants would have to possess some basic, minimal facility with English (including reading, writing and speaking), be of sound mind, be emotionally stable, not be suffering from some active form of addiction, not have been convicted of any felony or have been institutionalized for mental disturbance, and, as well, be a citizen of the United States. People who worked for any branch or division of federal, state, or local government – including the military, National Guard, and law enforcement -- would not be eligible to serve on the Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury. In addition, anyone who was a professional, paid political lobbyist or who was a corporate executive or who sat on the Board of Directors of any limited liability corporation, or anyone else who could be shown to have a conflict of interest with respect to, on the one hand, either serving the interests of government over against the interests of the people, or, on the other hand, serving the interests of limited liability corporations over against the interests of the people (for example, there are many people who work in the media who march to the tune of corporate/ and or government interests and, therefore, could not be trusted to fulfill their grand jury responsibilities with integrity) – none of these individuals would be permitted to serve on the proposed Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury. In addition, there would be a minimum age requirement. This would be set as the same age as what is necessary for a person to run for the House of Representatives … namely, being 25 years of age. The National Grand Jury would consist of 100 people. There would be two individuals selected from each state. The state grand juries would consist of one person from each county. Because different states vary in the number of counties which exist, the number of participants in state grand juries would vary from state to state. With the exception of the first set of Citizen Grand Juries which are established through the process outlined previously involving high schools, each succeeding set of grand jurors would be selected through a random process. This process would be conducted and organized by the currently sitting Citizens' Oversight Grand Jury members in accordance with the basic requirements for identifying potential future grand jury members and for ensuring that the succeeding grand jury was representative of a cross-section of the people. The National Grand Jury would 'select' its successors through a random, blind process drawn from among a pool of randomly selected candidates. The state Grand Juries would also 'select' their successors through the same kind of random, blind process from among a pool of randomly selected candidates who satisfied the basic criteria of selection. All candidates for either the National or the State Grand Juries would have to fill out an affidavit attesting to their compliance with the criteria for being a grand juror as well as to their willingness to serve for a two year period. Once selected, the prospective jurors would have their affidavits checked for accuracy by local law enforcement, and once the accuracy of the information had been verified such individuals would have been cleared to assume their positions on the various grand juries for which they had been selected. The participants would be full-time and could not lose whatever position of work they held prior to being called to public service. The participants, and their families, also would be sequestered in gated, secure compounds to which the outside world would have limited access but which the participants could leave as needed as long as they kept a log of all contacts established in the external world. In addition, although sequestered, the participants would have access to whatever information, books, newspapers, magazines, services, or witnesses they needed in order to fulfill their function. The members of the grand juries would be compensated equally. They would receive a compensation which cannot be less than $50,000, adjusted for inflation and, as well, would include a full housing allowance, travel allowances, health care, daycare where needed, and educational provisions for the children of the participants. All deliberations of the respective grand juries would be done in secret. Moreover, once completed, the deliberations of the various grand juries would be made available to the public through different means including a set of public broadcast channels that would be used exclusively to communicate with the public concerning the activities of the various grand juries. | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Next | Part 11 |