Feb 20, 2010
CO: In War, Truth is the First Casualty
We are at war. The first casualty of this war was truth. Only the truth will set us free.
Though it may appear that America is faced with a dilemma, the premise bringing us to the precipice of the apparent dilemma is necessarily flawed. To solve the apparently unsolvable, the flawed premise must be supplanted with the truth.
Here is a flawed premise: The government can do anything it wants and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Here is the truth: Lawmakers, so called, may not negate what is authentic with a counterfeit, by making what is otherwise counterfeit authentic by fiat.
Should a counterfeit be accepted as real, the real is rejected as counterfeit.
When a counterfeit is all we see, all we see is a counterfeit.
If all we see is a counterfeit, we will never see what is genuine, real, authentic or true.
If all we know is a counterfeit, we know nothing of what is authentic.
If all we know is a counterfeit, and we know nothing of the authentic, we can't know the in-authenticity of the counterfeit.
Though we may know what we know, and know what we don't know, we don't know what we don't know, and can't know that we can't know.
We live in delusion when we accept a lie as truth.
How then, do we begin to distinguish what is genuine, real and true, if all we know is the counterfeit? How can we know something we can't know?
We must first be willing to consider the possibility that what we know may actually be a counterfeit.
We must be willing to confront our own ego, its need to be right, and be willing to be wrong. We must be willing to accept the possibility that what we think is true, might not be.
We must be willing to consider the possibility that we have been believing as true is in fact merely a counterfeit being promoted as authentic.
We must be willing to entertain the possibility that certain edicts we currently accept and dignify as law by our tacit, consensual obedience, might be unworthy of our allegiance.
If by legislative fiat what is authentic is supplanted by a counterfeit, does what is authentic cease to be real? Is that which is true negated because lawmakers enthrone a counterfeit?
Read carefully this opinion by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison. 5 U.S. 1 Cranch 137 (1803):
"The question whether an act repugnant to the Constitution can become the law of the land is a question deeply interesting to the United States, but, happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognize certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it.
"That the people have an original right to establish for their future government such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it nor ought it to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed, is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent.
"This original and supreme will organizes the government and assigns to different departments their respective powers. It may either stop here or establish certain limits not to be transcended by those departments.
"The Government of the United States is of the latter deion. The powers of the Legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may at any time be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it, or that the Legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.
"Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
"If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written Constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
"Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.
"This theory is essentially attached to a written Constitution, and is consequently to be considered by this Court as one of the fundamental principles of our society. It is not, therefore, to be lost sight of in the further consideration of this subject.
"If an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the Courts and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory, and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on.
"Thus, the particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written Constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument." [Emphasis added] Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 1 Cranch 137 137 (1803)
David Justice
Colorado Coordinator