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Corruption and the Supreme Court—But I Repeat Myself
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

E-mailing a friend the other day, she replied to something I said with, "I'm afraid the rule of law is over, especially in the United States."

Coming, as it did, in the shadow of United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' low, craven, belly-crawling, despicable and disgusting betrayal of his oath of office and everything else that the man ever lived by or held sacred, it was a hard statement to argue with.

The fact is, Obamacare—call it by its proper name, medicalized Marxism—is thoroughly unconstitutional, therefore illegal, and the matter has nothing to do with the neoRepublicanoid mumblings and ravings of an individual who had apparently risen to his level of incompetence (not to mention indecency) when he got out of bed that morning.

America's right wing socialists have consistently maintained that the heart of the issue lies with forcing individuals to buy a product they don't want. They are right, to the microscopic extent they're willing to go, although I doubt they'd argue the same way when it comes, say, to forcing us to buy headlights and taillights for our cars.

Theirs is a tactic, I believe, of deliberately built-in weakness, of cold-bloodedly calculated self-sabotage, so that, once the fight is over, and the socialism advocated by both sides has advanced another notch, they can all claim that they did their best to stop it—the same way that Harry Truman stopped the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We've seen it all before, many times if we're old enough, but the most flagrant recent demonstration was the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton for copulating with an intern in the Oval Office through a bodily aperture many Republicans claim to regard as inappropriate (unless performed on Senate pages or in public restroom stalls), when he should have been tried for treason, gross abuse of power, and mass murder.

The Senatorial proceedings were a farce. The activity (which the President absurdly claimed was not sex) was hardly forced on the girl, nor did it come (if you'll pardon the expression) as a surprise. She had told her school friends before she ever laid eyes (or anything else) on Waco Willie that she would need to buy some knee-pads. She kept the dress afterward, upon which he had deposited manifestations of this non-sexuality, as a precious souvenir of their warm and loving relationship.

Or evidence.

There was once a time when I had some respect for Fred Dalton Thompson, the ringmaster of this circus, but those days are gone forever.

Now don't get me wrong, here. I'm not saying there's anything good about forcing individuals to purchase something they don't want— that's what government is all about. Nor am I saying there's anything wrong with oral sex; I am a libertarian, after all, and a child of the 60s.

But there are certain priorities in life. Treason, gross abuse of power, and mass murder are more serious and impeachable offenses than copulating with a willing intern. And forcing people to buy medical insurance takes a back seat to the blatant violation of a portion of the Constitution known as Article I, Section VIII, which spells out the only legal duties and powers of the government, and reads in its entirety:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

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;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Now before your little fingers skitter to the nearest keyboard to point out the words "general Welfare" in the first paragraph of Article I, Section VIII, I am aware of them, and the fact that their meaning and weight has been debated over the centuries. They have been used as a excuse for every illegality and outrage this government has ever committed from the Louisiana Purchase (which was, the cold truth be told, unlawful, and could have been accomplished in other ways with a little effort and imagination) to Sherman's March through Georgia, to burning crops, killing livestock, and stealing everybody's gold coins during the Depression, to destroying a village in order to save it.

If folks were still inclined to argue about such things these days, instead of cleaning their rifles, sharpening their bayonets, and adding to their supplies of ammunition, those same two words, "general welfare", would almost certainly be employed in a perfunctory attempt to justify the erection of dozens or hundreds of FEMA concentration camps across this sad, battered land, in case we all get too uppity— another government "program" not specifically mentioned anywhere within Article I, Section VIII, and, on account of that, absolutely forbidden.

Moreover, in a document that goes on to talk very specifically about establishing post offices, building roads, promoting the progress of science and useful arts, naturalization, bankruptcy, and turning a Virginia swamp into the nation's capital, you would expect taking over, monopolizing, and regimenting the entire "healthcare industry" to get a mention of its own. I would, anyway, which is probably why I'm not the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

I am available, though, in case anybody asks.

The term "healthcare industry", by the way, is itself a rhetorical trick to convince everybody that what was once simply somebody's trade has lately become something enormous, threatening, sinister, and in need of government control—you know, like Microsoft or the Bank of America.

Or have I gone too far?

Bill Gates and Brian Moynihan would probably think so.

It's important to understand that Republicans are socialists, too, and don't want Article I, Section VIII brought up any more often than Democrats, because the vast bulk of everything they advocate or aspire to politically violates it. They have their own "healthcare policies" and believe me, they do not include the total, formal, Constitutional separation of medicine and state that the people of America really need.

Which brings us, at long last, to "corruption", a word with two meanings. Originally, "corrupt" simply meant "rotting", which is the way it was employed in the Book of Common Prayer or whatever it was that 18th century British Navy captains read from whenever they dumped a corpse into the ocean. Jesus Christ, by contrast (according to the same funereal reading), had an incorruptible body, and we all wanted to be just like him when we grew up (or we croaked, whichever came first).

I will write, sometimes, of something being putrescently corrupt, but that's actually a redundancy. To say that something shines with corruption (which I will also do on occasion) is simply to point out that bacterial activity is often accompanied by a peculiar kind of luminescence.

However the word "corrupt" has also come to apply to an individual or an act that is considered morally, economically, or politically criminal, as with a judge who accepts a bribe or allows himself to be intimidated into destroying a whole civilization with the stroke of a pen.

My friend had lamented, "I'm afraid the rule of law is over."

She was referring specifically to an editorial I'd written with regard to Hillary Clinton, the so-called United Nations Small Arms Treaty she's pimping, and the ultimate legal supremacy of the Bill of Rights over every other law and treaty. What I'd said was that "Obama and his orcish minions [which now include United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts] can sign any damned thing they want to, and the Senate can ratify their asses off. It still comes to nothing if enough individuals ever get to see what I've written about the matter."

To what she said about the rule of law, I replied, "I understand why you would say that, believe me. But there are now millions of us out here saying 'It isn't over until I say it's over'. There've been bleaker moments in history, and we have more tools than our ancestors had."

The law—the very concept of the Rule of Law—belongs to us, to the people. It has been hijacked—no, make that kidnapped and raped—over the course of 250 years by corrupt, dishonorable lawyers and judges. United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, for all his titled grandiosity, is nothing more than another corrupt, dishonorable official in a decaying civilization presently commanded by corrupt, dishonorable officials. But that condition is far from irreversible.

The law must be taken back from them.

With prejudice.

L. Neil Smith is the Publisher and Senior Columnist of L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE, as well as the author of 33 freedom-oriented books, the most recent of which is DOWN WITH POWER: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis:
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