Full Spectrum War

What is Full Spectrum War?

First off it is not Total War.  Total War is that form of war done between Nation States that sees the productive capacity of a combatant Nation as the source of its military power and is a valid target for waging war.  This form of war is one that has seen Sherman's March as part of a Grand Strategy to remove the South's productive capacity to support war as one of its modern forms.  In Ancient time's Hannibal's attack on Rome to remove its capacity to wage war was an earlier form of this.  Similarly by the accounts we have from Homer it is clear that during the Trojan War the Achaean Greeks set upon the trading partners and allies of Troy to denude it of protection and economic support – thus the siege was not one meant to take place in a single year (as soldiers did tend to go home during parts of the siege making it an annual affair at Troy) but to slowly wage a war of attrition on Troy.  Economic attrition is at the heart of Total War and the faster it is done the faster the conflict ends.

Full Spectrum War is not Total War.

Full Spectrum War is not done in the Public War venue alone and is not waged, necessarily, against Public Enemies.  It can be utilized against Public Enemies (ie. Nation States) and has been utilized in multiple conflicts via the use of Privateers.  Privateers are not Mercenaries as they do not work for cash paid for by a Nation State.  Privateers are granted Letters of Marque and Reprisal against enemies named on such letters, and those enemies are targeted to have their goods taken or destroyed by the Letters.  Privateers live by Takings under such Letters and they seek to take the goods of a named enemy (and the conveyance of it is usually included in that, although that can be exempted by the Nation handing out such Letters) and then have them certified via an Admiralty Court so that such Taken goods can then be utilized or reduced to monetary value via the means of auction.  The US has deployed Privateers up to the US Civil War and the US generally announces if it will be seeking to use them during conflicts.  Of course such announcements can be overturned by Congress as it is the holder of the Private War Powers.

Full Spectrum War is thus a form of War done in the Public and/or Private venues.  It is particularly useful against Private Enemies which are non-Nation State in nature, as they live a form of hand to mouth savage existence based on preying upon others via the use of Private War.

What is Private War?

Private War is that form of war conducted by individuals or groups of individuals without the sanction of any Nation State.  Those waging such Private War are a threat to all mankind and the entire Nation State system as they are not accountable to any law but that of Nature by their own actions.  By stepping out from the Nation State system they revert to Natural Law as their means to survive and that makes them predatory and waging opportunistic war as part of their savage nature.  Those waging Private War no longer agree to Civil Law nor Military Law (which is part and parcel of Civil Law as it is administered by Governments), they set their own goals by their own standards which are not amenable to Moral Law as they make that up as they go along.  Thus the only form of law they are accountable to is that of Nature which is common to all Natural Beings.  Private War is waged by such people who have stepped from civilization and those waging it are no longer considered civilized humans.  This was an active decision on their part, forced upon them by no one, and once that step is taken there are very few ways to get back into civilized life.

Full Spectrum War is that form of war that is suitable to such savages who wage war for their own sakes and do not seek the trappings of civilization to do so.  They fight without uniforms, without a civil code that they are accountable to, they do not fly a recognized flag and those that are under their power are not there voluntarily.  Without a government, without a command structure, without a civil code, without a military code, without uniforms and by holding individuals captive under their power and giving them no civil choice or input into what is done, those that wage Private War are savages by their own intent and actions.  As they are not a Nation State, no matter what they call themselves, they are not amenable to international law between Nations as they have stepped from the system of Nation States as well.  Via the Law of Nations as known at the Founding and Framing of the US, these individuals are known to have many names but fall under the general category of Pirates.

What are Pirates?

Pirates are those individuals who wage Private War to their own ends and have stepped away from Civil Law and the Law of Nations to take on humanity for their own purposes.  Pirates are not limited to any geographic region, to any single place and are defined solely by being individuals who wage war on their own.  Pirates are not limited to the sea and have been noted since the beginning of history as being on land as well as at sea.  The sea is a form of transportation for those waging Piracy against mankind, and Pirates have attacked on land, at sea, and in hijacking aircraft they also attack from the skies.  Wherever humans walk away from the restrictions of Civil Law and the Law of Nations to declare themselves independent of all mankind and against the order of Nations is where you will find Pirates.  Anyone has the possibility to revert to being a savage and when done by a civilized human it is conscious act.  There are no trappings to Piracy, no requirement for ships, parrots, peg legs, hooks for hands, rum, eye patches, or even a black flag with some terrifying image on it.  When such savages form into bands they will often take on trappings and Take conveyances, and then Take whatever they want including lives.  Pirates have lived by many means: raiding ships, raiding ports, raiding villages and farms, and raiding Nations which contain all those civilized forms of life.

Terrorists wage Private War and are thusly Pirates.  As has been noted terror is just a tactic in warfare, and it can be used in either the Public or Private venues of War.  Those who take on the tactic but are under no Nation State sanction then fall into the category of Pirate.  Calling them by the tactics they use is trying to sugar coat what those tactics are part of when not done by Nation State sanction, and is a means to try and streamline base savagery into our lives so as to bring down the order of Nations via corrupting our understanding of what is and is not civilized in the realm of War.  Public War has restrictions upon it, and those waging it are to declare it, name their enemies, go through the proper civil means for their Nation to wage it, and then to be accountable to other Nations in their waging of war via the Treaties that Nation has signed for fighting Public War.  When anyone tries to put Pirates into the categories reserved for those fighting Public War, they are seeking to corrupt our civilized understandings of the differences between Public War and Private War: between civilized war and savage war.

Full Spectrum War takes place in multiple venues, not just of War but of Law as well.

The Piracy Codes set up a system of announcing who Pirates are.  That puts other Nations on notice that any individuals or groups considered as Pirates by one Nation are a threat to them, as well.  There are only two sides to Piracy: civilization and savagery.  There is no 'but they want the right thing' with those who are Pirates, as doing the right thing in warfare requires Nation State sanction.  Imagine what the world would look like if anyone could wage war for any reason they wanted without any restriction upon them.  What you get is not a civilized world, but one gone to the red of tooth and claw.  We set aside our Negative Liberties to wage war and utilize the Law of Nations to create means to restrict Negative External War via Civil Law.  The Positive Liberty of War, that of self-defense against those waging War is primal to all living things and cannot be separated from them.  Any mother or father defending their children have the Positive Liberty of War on their side.  If you are confronted by those utilizing aggressive, attacking means against your life, that of your family, your property or against your neighbors, you have the Positive Liberty of War available to you.  Any felon who has served their time may take up arms in defense of themselves and then hold themselves accountable for doing so and no court in any land will convict them for that taking up of arms in purely defensive posture.  Those who step from the fold of civilized life have reclaimed their Negative Liberty of War to themselves, as is their right via Natural Law.  That puts them outside of Civil Law and the Law of Nations, however, and there is nothing good nor admirable about waging war to your own ends as that is savage and uncivilized, both.

Thus the Civil Law has Piracy Codes so that those aiding and abetting Piracy can be brought to heel as well as those committing it be brought to civil justice.  Those acquitted are considered to be civilized in nature and the surest way of clearing yourself of any charge of waging Private War, which is to say Piracy and its sub-species of 'terrorist' is to voluntarily give yourself up to civil prosecution under law.  Indeed, to clear one's name you voluntarily step back into the fold and DEMAND that you be prosecuted.  Sadly that is not available to you if you have been caught actually committing Piracy which is to say 'terrorism'.  Then the codes of Military Justice are the recourse, via the Courts Martial, and those have specific items for those who do not wage regular war under such International Agreements as the Hague and Geneva Conventions.  Indeed, waging Private War puts one afoul of multiple parts of both Conventions on how and when to wage war, how to treat Private Property, and how to conduct oneself when at war.  In point of fact the general activities of 'terrorists' or Pirates falls under the 'Spies and Saboteurs' part of the Geneva Convention, which has summary execution as its outcome.  Under the Hague Conventions there are escalating penalties for the abuse and wanton killing of civilians with no National sanctions, taking or destroying private property without due orders of a Nation, and in general conducting war outside of the Nation State sanctioned system runs one afoul of the entire set of Hague Conventions  which can give one a terminal end via a Court Martial.

Another means via the Civil Law and Military Codes is the sanctioned takings from Enemies via those designated via a Nation State with Letters of Marque and Reprisal.  This is the sanctioned means that all Nations have available to them, even if they signed a treaty saying they would not do such things a Nation needing such activities can then indicate via the means within the Treaty that they will no longer be following such parts of those agreements governing such actions.  Treaties are VOLUNTARY in Nature between Nations and can, thus, be stepped away from as well.  Even those forced upon a loser in a war are considered voluntary so that the conflict may end in agreeable manner, but those can be stepped away from as well.  The Occupation of the Rhineland was a sure step that indicated that Germany was no longer bound by the Treaty of Versailles.  The ABM Treaty is considered defunct as well.  So is the Washington Naval Treaty governing the number and types of ships and what armaments they can carry.  All sorts of treaties are stepped away from or just abandoned or considered defunct because all the signatories are violating it and no one wishes to enforce it.  In fact no Nation wishing to enforce a Treaty it signed is a sure indicator that a Treaty is dead.

From this Full Spectrum War can be seen as having multiple components:

1) Public War via Nation State Military means.

2) Civil Law prosecution via the Piracy Codes.

3) International Law prosecution via agreed-upon Treaty language.

4) Civil Law based Military Codes for the granting of individuals or groups with Letters of Marque and Reprisal and granting of Takings and reduction of same so that such individuals and groups can find a means to operate.  This is an economic aspect of war against those waging Private War that has not been deployed.

5) Proactive support of the Positive Liberties of War which is to say the Civil Right of Self-Defense for all civilized humans.

6) Treaty enforcement of wartime obligations upon combatants in war.

7) Utilizing the understood threat of Pirates to all Nations and to seek the extinguishing of those individuals and groups wherever they arise by all civilized means necessary in all venues.

To consider oneself civilized that is what one must support.

There are no favorites to play with savage man seeking to enforce their will upon all mankind.  If they cannot demonstrate that they are seeking to be part of the civil order of Nations, then those who fight on their own for their own reasons to their own ends are a threat to everyone without exception.

Being civilized is more than just leading one's life under civil law.  It has duties, obligations and requirements for individuals to fulfill so that civilization does not get liquidated by our savage nature.   We agree to the limits that come with being civilized, and those limits are a great strength, not a weakness, as they requires us to be creative in our means of addressing savagery and yet remain civilized.  Those who have gone savage are under no such compulsion and their wanton killing, destruction and enslavement of their fellow man is clear to see, but only if one opens one's eyes to actually perceive what is going on.

Being civilized isn't about being nice.  There is a time and place for that, and there is no place for it with those who wantonly wage savage, predatory Private War.  Those who do so must be opposed in all venues, simultaneously.

That is Full Spectrum War.

What are tactics and what is strategy?

From dictionary.reference.com:

tac·tics

[tak-tiks]

noun

1.  ( usually used with a singular verb ) the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle.

2.  ( used with a plural verb ) the maneuvers themselves.

3.  ( used with a singular verb ) any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success.

4.  ( usually used with a singular verb ) Linguistics .

a.  the patterns in which the elements of a given level or stratum in a language may combine to form larger constructions.

b.  the study and description of such patterns.

And from the same source:

strat·e·gy

[strat-i-jee]

noun, plural strat·e·gies.

1.  Also, strategics. the science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.

2.  the use or an instance of using this science or art.

3.  skillful use of a stratagem: The salesperson's strategy was to seem always to agree with the customer.

4.  a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result: a strategy for getting ahead in the world.

Using just the dictionary style reference, I would disagree with strategy item #3 example as a salesman is employing a tactic in pursuit of the strategy of a sale.  I'll use die.net to show how a prior generation examined these two words:

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Tactics \Tac"tics\, n. [Gr. ?, pl., and ? (sc. ?, sing., fr. ? fit for ordering or arranging, fr. ?, ?, to put in order, to arrange: cf. F. tactique.]

1. The science and art of disposing military and naval forces in order for battle, and performing military and naval evolutions. It is divided into grand tactics, or the tactics of battles, and elementary tactics, or the tactics of instruction.

2. Hence, any system or method of procedure.

And strategy:

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Strategy \Strat"e*gy\, n. [Gr. ?: cf. F. strat['e]gie. See Stratagem.]

1. The science of military command, or the science of projecting campaigns and directing great military movements; generalship.

2. The use of stratagem or artifice.

Both of these items involve planning, but their scales are very different given the problem to be addressed.  Tactical decisions are typically battlefield decisions with goals set on the battlefield as guided by overall strategy.  Thus an operation to 'take a hill' to divert the enemy and feign an attack in one place so as to distract from the main thrust is a tactical decision of the best way to carry out the larger theater tactical or theater strategic goals.  A theater of war is one that encompasses a number of areas, so that there was a European Theater of Operations in WWII as well as a Pacific Theater of Operations in that same war.  Each Theater of Operations had its own set of goals set by the Theater of Operations Strategic Objective.  Individual battles were tactical instances of utilizing force to achieve the larger set of objectives set in the Theater of Operations.  In the European Theater of Operations there was an over-arching Grand Strategy above the Theater level that required that Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany be defeated. 

At the Theater Level this required a series of operations starting in Africa, to dislodge the Afrikacorps and Italian forces from there so as to remove pressure on British shipping.  For a time that was the only part of the European Theater of War that was operable for the Allies, beyond a basic defense of the UK.  To achieve the end of the Theater Strategy required Theater Tactics on the deployment of troops, their numbers, types, amounts and logistical support without which the operation would have failed and the Theater and Grand Strategy set back.  All of the subsequent battlefield tactical decisions, the stuff you see so many programs about, are all in pursuit of the larger goals.  There are different skill sets and approaches required for these different areas of operation, and one must discriminate between them so as to ascertain just what the strategy is and which tactics are suitable.

And this quote sums up the applicability of strategy and tactics as concepts to diplomacy:

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
- Zhou Enlai

That is why the US State Dept. has different areas of responsibility or Theaters of responsibility to it, and what diplomats seek to gain is the advantage for their Nation by finding agreement with other Nations.  It is much, much better if everyone agrees with each other's requirements and things can be done in a peaceful manner because you lose far fewer lives and have a lower cost (perhaps even a mutual cost reduction or net benefit!) via diplomatic agreements than you get via warfare.  In the early days of warfare, when produced items and agriculture were relatively primitive, one could gain great riches by going to war and plundering one's enemies.  Today that is much less the case and mechanized warfare has a high cost to it that goes higher the more sophisticated the equipment comes.  Diplomats, then, are the first wave of troops and commanders you send overseas to see if you can find some agreement amongst Nations: they are the shock troops that employ a set of tactics that do not, typically, involve killing others.  Diplomats are servants to the Grand Strategy of the Nation State, which is set by whoever is put in charge of that stuff, but it is usually an Executive function of a Nation State (although there are exceptions like the Republic of Venice and its Council of Doges).  It is that Grand Strategy that guides the Nation State and it is executed by diplomats and by the military of a Nation that takes into account when diplomacy fails.

Diplomatic failure does not always lead to war as that is situation dependent, so that a minor faux pas with a friendly power is something to snicker at, while the same faux pas with an antagonist might lose you the diplomat, the Embassy and put the Nation State into a war without any preamble to it.  The back-up plan for the first wave of effecting a Grand Strategy is the military might of a Nation.  Failure of diplomacy is not always something a diplomat can do anything about, particularly if a belligerent Nation cuts off diplomatic ties and accepts no behind-the-scenes talks.  At that point, when diplomatic means are refused at all levels, it is the responsibility of the military to pick up the slack and begin preparing for a hostile Nation to go into an active state of hostilities.

Diplomacy is part of a spectrum of warfare and George Washington underscored that point while as President by making all diplomatic efforts part of the War Dept.  Because any minor failure, with even a modest foreign power no matter how distant, might mean disaster for the trade and survival of the young United States, the diplomats all understood the gravity of their situation by going through a military command structure run by the military.

Can mere tactics create strategy?

Yes, it can.  The best case in point is the set of tactics described between WWI and WWII by B.H. Liddel Hart in his book Strategy in which he described how mechanized warfare would work and the necessary change in Strategic approach it required not just in warfare but in the logistics behind warfare.  A series of papers between the World Wars described just how armored and mechanized mobile troop units would create a new style of warfare and that Nation States would need to adjust not only their tactics but their strategies to accommodate this new warfare.  He was not alone in this review of how mechanized mobile armor platforms would change everything about how war was fought (just as the machine gun did for World War I, though very few pre-WWI strategists recognized the importance of this tactical innovation).  World War II and the post-WWII era saw the bulk of those insights come to pass and we now live in a world where the foundational understanding of warfare is mechanized and mobile warfare in all venues of all theaters of operations.

From World War I also came a modernized reprise of chemical weapons attacks done on a large Grand Tactical scale on the Fronts during the war.  Grand Tactical is a set of arms or methodology for deployment of troops and arms that are employed across all Theaters of War.  Chemical and Biological Weapons pre-date the modern era and were used in the siege of castles and the subduing of cities going back to an era that predates riding horses into battle.  This class of weapons only gain the Weapons of Mass Destruction moniker when they can be produced on a scale large enough to turn the tide of war when an enemy has no defenses against it.  As such these tactical devices in the CW and BW areas can only meet the WMD tag when used against those without defenses, but are little different from other mass forms of arms utilizing conventional forms of attack.  Nuclear devices gain the WMD tag by destroying a mass in an instant, and that effect is a large scale one, hence weapon of mass destruction in both size, scope and effectiveness.  CW and BW arms do not meet those criteria of size, scope and effectiveness, even when all the stars are aligned for use of them.  Against the defenseless these sets of conditions are easier to meet, yes, but nature will have her way with them in the way of wind, humidity and a number of other factors that will limit or negate the use of them in a way that nuclear devices are not prone to.  Fallout is an effect of a nuclear device, not the reason you use one, thus how nature moves a cloud of radioactive fallout is secondary to the use of the device itself, while spreading chemical or bio components in a direction of the wind that is not wanted thwarts the primary intent of the weapon, itself.

This now moves us to the present and what President Obama wants, or doesn't want, in regards to Syria.  I'll take a part of a piece by Miriam Elder in BuzzFeed on 01 SEP 2013 on the topic of Strategy and what President Obama wishes to do in Syria:

“The results of this mystifying lack of preparedness have been abysmal,” he wrote, calling Obama’s decision to seek congressional approval for the strikes “constitutionally sound, but strategically appalling” and suggesting the White House find “an objectives-based strategy.”

Hof struck at what, for those who spend their time thinking about grand strategy and not domestic politics, is the heart of the matter. The administration has consistently separated the goals it hopes to achieve with a military strike — punish Assad, send a warning to similar states, restore U.S. credibility — from the objectives it hopes to achieve politically: to reach a negotiated peace in Syria with Assad no longer at the country’s helm. In terms of strategic planning, the separation of the two is almost a rookie error.

I do understand that Miriam Elder may not be up on the differences between strategy and tactics, as the middle ground of the two realms can be hazy even to those on the inside of the operational spheres in question.  However, with analysis, it is possible to separate what is strategic and what is tactical from her review.

First is the lack of preparedness cited by Frederic Hof, and that is an easy thing to designate as a tactical error.  Being unprepared to enforce a policy decision, which is a part of the overall Strategy of the United States, is a tactical error by a President.  I do agree that seeking the approval of Congress is not just sound, but a necessity so as to gain the necessary funds to supply the military for doing anything with regard to Syria.  And when a President seeks to perform offensive operations that expend logistical supplies, equipment and possibly lives, that means that Congressional approval can show support for the policy decision.

That policy decision is one that drives objectives, and here Mr. Hof states that the strategy is objectives-based.  Objectives are to be driven by strategy from policy, and when those get reversed it demonstrates that you have no policy and no strategy at work.  Thus an 'objectives-based strategy' is no strategy at all as objectives are driven out by strategy.

As seen previously tactics can drive strategy and, perforce, change objectives, but that only comes from the understanding of the change in tactics.  An 'objectives-based strategy' that does not clearly and succinctly say what the larger strategy framework is to drive out those objectives actually is, then gives the appearance of having no larger based strategy at work.

The goals as outlined are multi-fold and deserve some examination to determine if they are just goals or if they are tactical or strategic plans.

First is to 'punish Assad', presumably through military strikes.  Yet this can be achieved through non-military means like has been seen in the case of Iran, Cuba and North Korea, through diplomatic sanctions, seeking to cut off aid in the form of banking to the regime, or through other non-military means.  Indeed, even though Syria is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, a President can go to the other CWC signatories and point out that their lack of action with regards to Saddam Hussein has now led the world into a realm where terrorists are now getting their hands on CWs via the means of civil war.  The goals given in the CWC is to prevent such spread and proliferation from happening and the CWC signatory Nations should have it pointed out to them that they have an obligation to act to their stated Foreign Policy goals that they voluntarily signed up for via diplomatic means.  A much wider array of Nations could be asked to either put up and support what they signed up for, or to walk away from the CWC saying that they cannot support it any more.  If punishing Assad and the Syrian regime is a goal, it is questionable if it is best served by any military strikes by the US without gaining the backing of a treaty group that said they wanted to curb if not end such activities. By pointing out this venue there are also other treaty venues outside of the UN to go through to 'punish Assad' through diplomatic means, and they might actually be effective and save lives, and curb the spread of CWs.  All of this can start with a simple policy statement that the US has no interest in the outcome of the civil war in Syria, but that we deplore the use of WMDs and will seek agreement amongst all those Nations with similar foreign policy goals to start achieving those ends.

When translated to a military level, then, 'punish Assad' is a tactical goal in service to a stated Strategy.  Yet, when it is a 'goal-based strategy' that is effectively saying that the goal is the only thing in the strategy and that there is no larger framework to the goal.  It is a goal in service of itself, which is not just irrational but can have long-term consequences when the aftermath of trying to reach the goal, or failing to do so, happens.  And it will happen once the goal is stated and achieved or not achieved because it has been stated as the goal of the Nation of the United States.

Second is 'send a warning to similar States'.  This can be achieved through multiple means, as well which I outlined in the first goal area: cutting off banking, seizure of accounts, cutting off US trade with such regimes, working with the CWC treaty organization of Nations... all of that done without a single shot fired by the US.  In fact that would be a much clearer warning that the US is fed up with such things than a military attack, as it would be done quickly as part of a stated foreign policy with objectives to stop the proliferation of WMDs at the Nation State level.  Of course that would take actually having that as a policy.  That can only be done by the President as he is the one who creates much of the foreign policy execution and how it is done, without having to go to Congress.

When translated into the military realm this concept of 'sending a warning to similar States' is nebulous.  There are many ways to achieve this when given a military set of conditions and not all of them deal with actually trying to destroy or eliminate the weapons themselves.  As a goal it must have a framework of what is to be achieved, and simply curbing the use of such weapons in Syria can be done by such things as destroying infrastructure, attacking shipping, or dropping lots of small arms to the civilian population with a note on each piece asking nicely if they would 'take care of this tyrant for their own safety' in a way similar to dropping Liberator pistols in occupied France during WWII to help the Underground Resistance there.  That is something that would be guided by conditions and by Congress, if there can be an actual foreign policy statement given to this 'goal' that puts it in service to some larger strategic framework.

The third goal to 'restore US credibility' means that the US has already lost credibility in this case.  That is due to the lack of having a foreign policy that can be stated as a Grand Strategy: there is no Grand Strategy at work to drive out policy and, from that, goals and instances of objectives in service to the Grand Strategy.  Without having a Grand Strategy that can be clearly and succinctly stated, this cannot be achieved.  It does not have to be a great foreign policy statement and the US has gotten away with rather short ones in its history:

- Walk softly and carry a big stick.

- Keeping the worlds worst weapons out of the hands of its worst people.

- Confronting an Evil Empire and calling it to reform.

- Carter Doctrine of Blood for Oil.

- Monroe Doctrine to keep foreign powers from the Western Hemisphere.

You don't need something fancy and convoluted to hang a foreign policy on and, in fact, the shorter and easier it is to remember the better off you are.  Each of these drove policy not only for the Administration that stated them but were an influence on future Administrations and the direction of the Nation as a whole.  The simplest way, then, to restore US credibility is to have a foreign policy that can be clearly stated as a Grand Strategy for the Administration.  That doesn't take ANY military maneuvers and can be accomplished by one man and one man only: the President of the United States.

The political objective that all of this is supposed to tie together is to reach a negotiated peace in Syria and end up with Assad out of power.  That should actually be a foreign policy objective tied to a Grand Strategy.  By trying to make it a political objective, to score 'points' by showing you can 'get something done' which has as its goal bolstering the status of the occupant of the Office.  Without having any real planning on the foreign policy or military side, the result of even achieving this objective is put in doubt as, without any pre-planning for success, others can step in to define it for themselves and actually snatch success away and for themselves.  That would be contrary to the stated objective, and is a result of a lack of any foreign policy to drive out goals and objectives which then puts the entire State Dept. and Dept. of Defense into the picture to help understand what the aftermath of such an objective is before you even attempt to achieve it.  That then creates not just a foreign policy failure but a political failure, as well, plus damages the credibility of the US still more.

In fact going through this entire procedure without a stated Grand Strategy for foreign policy damages the credibility of the US.  One way to not damage the credibility of the US is not to go through this procedure in the first place and have the President understand that some failures have a single father and that for the good of the Nation his personal credibility must be sacrificed. 

Yet he could just figure out a foreign policy Grand Strategy and avoid all this, while using the non-military options to show how that Grand Strategy will play out.

For as much as this President talks, he can't appear to say what his foreign policy Grand Strategy is.  Instead he gives us a few objectives that don't even require a military response, but that is the first thing he goes to.  And that loses him credibility far faster than choosing anything else he could choose.

No good shall ever come of that.

Passively implicit

The following is a cross-post from The Jacksonian Party.

When looking at the US Constitution I take a view of it as a structuralist, that is to say that the form of government is given as a structure that has a number of interlocking parts that are defined, limited and created to serve a purpose.  Structural analysis means that you take the words as they are presented in the context of the English language.  I laid this out in Structural analysis of Amendment II, and that rests on the work that I looked at earlier by Nicholas Rosencranz who laid out how the sentence structure of the English language creates the structure of government in the Subjects and Objects of the Constitution.  The lineage of the US Constitution starts with agreements outlined in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and King Alfred all the way through to Bill of Rights put in place with James II, which I went over in Roots of constitutional government.  For this article I'm going to be building off my article on Taxation via sales.

Taxation was part of the trigger for the US Revolution and it is understood that the Founders and Framers both had a view that taxation is a necessary evil to run the organ of society known as government.  As a necessary evil it must be limited so that it does not over stress the body which is society that requires the functioning of government to do the few and necessary things to allow for the individuals to be free.  With that said taxation takes many forms and the US Congress gets some particular types taxation in Art I, Sec 8, in part:

Section. 8.

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;

If Congress was getting the complete taxation power with this clause then there would be no need to put in Duties, Imposts and Excises, now, would there?  In fact it took an Amendment for Congress to get the income tax, and even that Amendment has been misused as it nowhere indicates that Congress may levy different taxes on different income levels.  The Progressive Income Tax requires not just the Income Tax part, but a specific exemption of the Privileges and Immunities clause and Amendment V and Due Process of Law which is to be applied equally to all citizens.  Be that as it may, later in Sec 8 is a clause that indicates what the scope of the Taxation power actually is:

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

Duties, Imposts and Excises are generally taxes aimed at the National level and at international trade.  Thus the regulatory or regularizing power of Congress writing law in support of Treaties or, in cases where there are no trade treaties, setting the Nation's tax policy towards importation of goods to sustain trade, thus are complementary to the Duties, Imposts and Excises previously mentioned.  That is to say there is an explicit venue given for the Taxation power that is complete for Congress for international trade modified by Treaties.  Thus even where it is a complete power it is one that has limitations via Treaty.

Next is Sec 9 where one tax power is restricted and then modified by Amendment:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

This is the first outright restriction to the Taxation power and now limiting it.  Do note that this is a passive clause and that it does not mention Congress nor does it mention any other branch or any other government.  Thus this applies to all governments and all branches of all governments in the United States.  Remember in Sec 8 there is the language 'The Congress shall have...' is an explicit grant of power and as all of Sec 8 is a single sentence with many semi-colons, all of that is covered under that.  There is no need to repeat it per line as the separate grants are broken up for clarity's sake, for readability, and to let someone catch their breath if they had to read it as a single sentence.

In Section 9 each clause is a single, stand-alone sentence, complete in and of itself.  These sentences are not started by explicit and active restrictions upon, say, Congress, but are passive and general in nature.  The Framers were more than capable of starting a sentence 'Congress shall make no law...' but these clauses do not start with that beginning.  As the Constitution is about the organization of the United States and what the role of the States shall be, when States require separate coverage they are mentioned, as in Sec 10, and I'm coming back to Sec 9, but here is the language on Taxation in 10:

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

With 'No State shall...' we are given a definitive subject and then a set of Objects with modifiers.  It is this language that is absent in Sec 9 and without an actual Subject that is defined then the generalized Subject is being addressed to all levels of all governments.

Imposts and Duties on Imports or Exports is a linking of topics in Sec 10 and due to that linkage these powers are addressed to those objects.  That explicit language and linkage then gives proper definition to the prior Congressional power on Imposts and Duties: Imports and Exports.  If a State wants a special exemption it must go to Congress and that only for the necessary execution of inspection laws.  By making those funds go to the US Treasury this is seen as a federal power granted to Congress and is for Imports and Exports.

Now back in Sec 9 there is the final clause and one that clearly de-limits powers and it is this:

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

As with the prior prohibition this one is given a passive voice and does not state 'Congress shall make no law...' nor does it start 'No State shall...' but, instead, addresses Taxation as a whole.  This is a restriction on the Taxation power, itself.  By not having either Congress or the States as the subject, as with the previous passive and standalone clause, this clause then addresses all governments in the United States.

This is an implicit restriction on taxation of goods moved from State to State on goods exported from one State to another State.  No government may do this in the United States.

Now lets flip this around into a different arena and ask: what is the form of this restriction on an international scale?

The States of the United States are seen as Sovereign entities and actually have an escape hatch from the US Constitution embedded within it in Sec 10:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

This language also shows up later in the Constitution in Art IV:

Section. 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

In Art IV, Sec 4 the guarantee of a Republican Form of Government is to the States, which are signatories to the US Constitution after ratification by the people of that State.  The protections against having this subverted are to protect the States against Invasion and domestic Violence.  In Art I, Sec 10 there are a set of powers that a State recovers if the United States does not support this and it is the ones they agree to set aside outside of these specific causes.  When you examine that list you get the conception of the broad headings that the States recover in full upon invasion, imminent threat of Danger or having their government threatened with being overturned via non-Republican means are broad and sweeping.  These powers are what we call the Foreign Policy power and the Military power, not just the defensive Militia power which is due to all men, but the assertive and external Military power.  Also it regains all the taxation powers and the powers to build new military fortifications and equipment to guard itself.

In International Affairs a State with the full Foreign Policy, Military and Taxation power is known as an independent Nation State: a country.

Thus the States must have these powers to set aside in this agreement known as the US Constitution, as you cannot recover what you did not have to start with.  That is simple logic.

Taking the US Constitution as a TREATY DOCUMENT and examining what the form of Taxation is we then come to a conclusion of the limitation on the Taxation power that is startling due to the understanding that is underlying it.  It is the scope and form of Treaty that many who have argued on the necessity of unburdened trade have used at the International scale and has its full form seen with an organizations of States that agree to this view so as to have a coherent Nation amongst them.

What is a trade agreement that unburdens trade amongst equals and limits the power of an oversight group so that it may not burden such trade via direct taxation?

What is a trade agreement that sets up a system whereby sellers in one State that is signatory to the Treaty cannot have its goods or services taxed by a recipient State and its citizens?

What is the form of trade agreement that abolishes duties, imposts and excises save for necessary inspection and then those funds applied only to those inspections to ensure that agreed-upon legal trade is all that is going on between States?

Why this does have a modern term, doesn't it?

This is known as a FREE TRADE AGREEMENT.

Right there, in the US Constitution, powerfully stated by not being explicit, not a direct power grant, but by restricting all the governments involved, including the agreed-upon oversight body.  It is one of the most subtle and yet powerful statements on the positive value of trade between States to knit a Union together and to allow that free men when trading with other free men in States that all fall under the Treaty shall have NO TAXATION applied to that direct sale from individual to individual, State to State.

And that means no 'Value Added Tax', 'Sales Tax' or any other thing not directly related to quantity, amount or hazard of a given good.  Taxation for tonnage is also removed unless it has safety or verification inspections involved.  The federal government can tax per gallon, per carton of cigarettes, or by any other gross weight and measure so long as it involves upkeep of infrastructure due to those particular items in the way of hazard or safety.

What no government can do is tax by VALUE of the trade involved.

Thus a nickel per gallon on tax is there without regard to the actual cost per galloon.  It is there if it is a penny per gallon and it is there if it is ten thousand dollars per gallon: the quantity is what matters, not the value.  And do note that is for interstate sales, only, so that in-State sales remain the realm of the State government.

Governments will always seek new sources of revenue and tax the hell out of anything they can get their hands on and yet still be unable to balance their budgets.

A free people have an 'out' from onerous taxation: our fellow citizens in the other States under this Free Trade Agreement embedded in the US Constitution.  As a remedy to overburdening of taxes this is one of the most sublime resorts that the ordinary citizen has to escape taxes, become closer with his fellow citizens and support the Union between the States.

Because that is the realm of the Preamble of the US Constitution and note who is invoking it and what we promise to do:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Thoughts for the future post-election

My views on the past election are simple and clear, or so I hope.  Taken from my commentary at Hot Air:

The next four years has a set of problems that remain unchanged, and they are due to a century of turning away from a fiscally responsible course and never working to pull back programs and hold institutions accountable for what they do. This does not change in 2 years of a Tea Party.

The ‘fiscal cliff’ of higher taxes, unsustainable debt, and the resulting low investment into the economy which gives lower jobs cannot be avoided no matter who is in office. Over-regulation of society and institutions by government was always going to be a hard job and will be harder because of who is elected, but the problem, itself, remains. The lowered productivity is a result of this, as well as an increasing cost to everything as central management fails as it has done since the beginning of time and only absolute poverty of thought and pocket have allowed such conditions to spiral into Iron Times.

As a Nation we see insolvent States about to go belly-up: CA, IL, NY to name but three. Yet Obama winning does not detract from the fact that at the State level the movement is away from ‘just accepting’ dictation from above. With 30 States with Governors who do not necessarily follow the federal government’s lead and Statehouses tasked with survival of their States likewise aligned, the coming problems of a few States going insolvent will point out that the Constitution is not a suicide pact: no State is ‘too big to fail’. That decision isn’t made at the federal level, but the State level and when the good and thrifty States put forth that their people did not vote for pensions in CA, IL, NY and elsewhere, then the second level of accountability comes into play along with its checks and balances.

These things were on the agenda no matter who won last night, and the American people are not giving a solid message but one that is nuanced with an innate understanding of what federalism is, even if it is not talked about. The fight now moves from the failed National institutions to the State and local level just where so many have said it would be and should be since the rise of the Tea Party. In that realm is the hardest fight for those who would correct the problems of society as the federal government will no longer be able or ready to help as it becomes insolvent in its own right. We will have a devalued currency, soaring prices for everything, and a bankrupt educational system from K-12 through to the University level that cannot be sustained and will, due to its own weight, collapse as it has already started to do.

Hard times are ahead and they always were. Mitt Romney promised to put pressure on the wound to at least allow it to clot up and perhaps limp along until something a bit better could be done. Now comes the next path, the harder path, the unpleasant path, the painful path and as we see our Nation devolve at the federal level it is up to the States to bring it back in line. We have grown overly fond of the 20th century Nation State and yet, driven by 19th century dogma against eternal 18th century understandings, it is up to us in the 21st century to apply the thing that is left to us: cauterize the wound. Our fellow citizens won’t want to face that now, but when they are slapped silly by having to pay for what others have promised and cannot deliver, when what they have been promised cannot be delivered, when their straits grow so dire because of unwise governmental choices then what other end is there?

Hold the Left to their lovely promises and continually ask how they can pay for it without killing people. Because medical rationing is the State deciding who should die and when – it is killing people via the element of the State. Taking from the rich does not make the poor wealthy as the economy declines, and that, too is the State deciding winners and losers and extending and deepening poverty for all which will kill those at the lowest part of society. This is the mirror that now must be held up to the gloating, smirking, finger-pointing, condescending Left and point to the blood on their hands and pooling around their feet. If all their lovely ideas are so grand, then why is such misery required and such impoverishment guaranteed? For this does not work out no matter when it was tried or by whom: it cannot be done ‘right’ because of the required misery that none on the Left dare to acknowledge and always decry as ‘someone else’s fault’ never their own.

That is your job: educate those who will listen, warn those who can hear, work with your fellow man to insure his safety, point out that the ills of the many are not solved by making the few worse off and killing the old, the poor, the young and the enfeebled. Help the educational system to implode and be prepared to take its place in your neighborhood so that the young can learn of our folly and that of their grand-parents and great-grandparents. Be an example to others, lead a good life, uphold your ideals, and prepare as many as you can for what comes next for it will be awful in ways we cannot conceive. Winning an election is not the same as surviving the victory, and an election is not a war but a battle.

As Breitbart said, we are at WAR.

I’ve been preparing for the long haul no matter who wins or loses a battle.

Have you?

ajacksonian on November 7, 2012 at 9:10 AM

What institutions are about to fail?

- Medicare and Medicaid, the M&Ms, aided and abetted by Obamacare.  These are no longer vital and insolvent and show the folly of government trying to figure out medicine and, with Obamacare, just decide who lives and who dies.  Just like with cronies in business, the government seeks to make newborns a crony to the ruling government via having to thank it for being allowed to live.  Yet this is fiscally and morally irresponsible, and those two go hand-in-hand.  And these hands drip with blood.

- Social Security is in the red and after a few years of getting paid off with inflated dollars in their bonds, it will soon be insolvent.  The government has attempted to set a retirement age while demographics has been pushing the upper limit of human healthy old age for decades.  Luckily with the Obamacare death panels, government might try to make SSA solvent by killing the old, the sick, the infirm.  That will be YOU because ideology and politics will be involved, and getting SSA will soon get not means tested but compliance tested as this is how tyrants secure power to their government.

- Education – As a 13th century institution it has run its course, and has varied from the best route of teaching one how to think and replaced it with rote learning.  The first gets you a vibrant and constantly questioning citizenry, while the latter gets you a compliant one.  Yet to perform this there must be more bureaucrats than educators, more overburden and less to sustain it, which causes the institution to become brittle, frail, and to implode due to the move to sustain ever growing revenue to ever more bureaucrats, and far less capable teachers who can no longer think on their feet.  This one is coming hard and fast at the post-secondary level, but even at the lowest level these institutions have been crumbling and no amount of money will sustain them.

- Banking at the National Scale has enabled and empowered deficit spending which can only be paid for by one of two routes: inflation of the currency to pay off past debt in devalued currency, meaning you are deprived of wealth as more money is in circulation without work to back it, or, high interest rates so that excess currency can be removed from circulation which lowers the tax base by having people paid less in more valuable currency and the taxes set up for a low valuation currency cannot adjust downwards fast enough to cover the delta.  With lowered tax revenue there is a call to increase taxation, but what does one do when the hard and fast poverty line is numerated in inflated currency?  Taxing the new 'poor' doesn't sell and the old 'rich' are paying less because of a stronger currency as well.  Neither of these will make the bankers to be nice people, and for not doing their duty a decade and more ago of taking the punch bowl away when the party was starting to roar, we will find ourselves truly questioning why we have a National Banking System known as the Federal Reserve as they will be shown to be clear currency manipulators doing the bidding of spendthrift politicians.

- Insolvent States – 'Too big to fail' will be attempted to apply to States like CA, IL, NY and any others that have over-obligated their tax base to pensions and pay-offs to retirees.  This now drives the debt burden up to these States to the point they cannot be sustained.  The States, as signatories to the US Constitution, do have the power to negate and change contracts, to put forward that contracts done with ill intention or just absent-mindedness can be dissolved.  The other States will be pointing this out to those insolvent States and that the power to re-organize is well within the legislative process inside the States.  Other States will refuse to accept the burden of 'too bit to fail' for other States and point out that THEIR taxpayers had no say in the debt incurred and obligated by States they DO NOT LIVE IN.  This will not 'break' the Union, but put up the mirror that it is upon those who obligate such debt to deal with it.

Then there is the backdrop to all of this on the Global level as crony systems fail and become insolvent globally.  The EU is unlikely to last out another decade and it may only have months to live at this point.  Unless you want to see Germany put in charge of it, which would be the equivalent of winning WWII and losing it a generation later.  Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and now France all teeter on the brink of chaos due to Left politics and social policies that can't be sustained by anyone, not even Germany.  Germany might be able to cushion a collapse of that international monstrosity, but it will not be tied to it as their people did not agree to the debt incurred by other European Nations.  See how that works?  It is a mirror of America a few months ahead of us at this point.

China  has spent capital and wealth for cities none can afford to live in and impoverished their people and inflated their currency by stealth.  Already the rumblings of problems from east to west, from polluted and failing industrial provinces to the rise of radical Islam are hammering at that Nation.  Communism has failed.  Corrupt and crony National Socialism has failed which is what China moved to in the post-Mao world.  China has been used to bloody solutions in the past but never had a population educated enough to actually formulate resistance to it.  For the first time ever in Chinese history its government will have to face an industrialized Nation being impoverished that is just educated enough to know what is being done to it and with 21st century electronic and social media tools to talk with each other about their plight.  When all of the Western debt holding move to lower value either via Nation State insolvency or inflation (or both) China's economy will implode and has already started that in seeing low cost labor jobs moving via Chinese companies outside of China.  China is not the last bastion of cheap labor: SE Asia and Africa are and now China will reap what it has sown.

India has grown by leaps and bounds, yet its infrastructure has not followed suit and its ability to uplift the poor has only incrementally improved.  With global problems comes threats to the modern infrastructure of electricity, sewage conditioning and potable water (where they are available).  Technologically India has taken vast strides in the late 20th century with the fall of the USSR and having never fully vested in its backwards economic system, India has allowed areas for growth internally.  Yet those, too, rely on debt and foreign sources for materials and finished goods, along with food.  Unrest due to lack of food has hit not just India but other Nations as well, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, and these will only grow as Western food sources decline in productivity due to backwards government spending.

The Middle East is in the midst of upheaval due to Radical Islam and broken, crony infrastructure that is used to repress peoples.  The elements of Radical Islam do not have any modern notion of economics and will cause further strife, chaos, disorder and starvation in their wake.  Starving masses usually don't provide for competent military machines, however, and utilizing jihadi self-destructive violence only makes problems worse for those Nations supplying such as productive and young individuals are removed from the workforce.  The human bomb of demographic domination is built on a house of cards sustained by Western agriculture and productivity, and once those disappear the problem becomes a demographic one internally to those Nations of the 'Arab Spring'.  North Africa will export foment and jihadism, yes, and the population crash will redouble the devastation upon that weary continent.

In the sub-Saharan southern Africa there are few good and viable Nations outside of South Africa, and even there social turmoil due to ethnic strife is not unknown.  If South Africa cannot assure its food supply then the problems about to beset the rest of the sub-Saharan region will come its way as well.  Outside of South Africa things are not so bright and the list of Nations undergoing social strife, ethnic cleansing, kleptocratic governments, and all with a backdrop of AIDS removing most of a generation is sobering.  It may well be that only the morally and socially upright populations and sub-populations survive to any great extent in 50 years due to the horror besetting their part of the world.

S. America is only meta-stable due to resource industries, which will collapse once Europe and North America no longer have industrial capacity nor demand to utilize them.  Nor will China in recession going far beyond anything we know as modern recession, be able to sustain internal demand (by building cities) to keep industries going.  Without industrialization spread deeply into S. America the opportunity to create vibrant economies is limited.  Chavez has pointed out that the end of socialist doctrines is internal lack of productive capacity and that indenturing people to the State (even if it is competently run) means lowering of living standards for all, not just the rich.  Argentina has had cash problems for more than a decade and its currency is suspect.  Brazil's crony socialism is about to see the end of ready cash flow, which means that without heavy industry and shifting away from agriculture, the Nation will be at extreme peril for internal problems.

Mexico had unwisely signed on to NAFTA, which exposed its backwards agrarian sector to the modernized US agribusiness.  Rural Mexico was deeply harmed as young men moved north to find jobs (first in transplanted US production facilities and, later, as illegal migrants seeking work) now find that those jobs are gone.  Organized crime and the foreign jihadi element helping the criminals now seeps into Mexico via standard means of corruption and through outright murder, often on a scale that dwarfs current wars.  Mexico had signed on to 'Green' ideas and limited marginal expansion of oil and natural gas, meaning that it is now bereft of those sectors to sustain the economy.  Mexico used to be able to feed its own people (albeit poorly) prior to NAFTA, and now that form of agriculture has been decimated by 20 years of NAFTA and those skills and knowledge of local farming, once lost, will not come back easily if at all.

Australia has been a relative bright spot for the world outside of Israel, as it had started to undo some of its socialist policies on retirement and put a relative amount of freedom back into the hands of its people.  Agriculture has done well in Australia and it is serving as the supplemental breadbasket of the world.  The internal problems of Australia are unique to it, including jihadists exporting problems to its shores.  As the British Commonwealth falters, it is Australia and Canada that will become those places trying to repeal the most onerous and financially lethal government policies the fastest.  The rest of the Anglo-sphere had best take note of this as these two Nations have resources, arable land, water, and relatively high productive capacity for the near term.  Longer term issues of global market collapse will hit these Nations, as well, but they will be able to weather these storms by having their people understand that the problems of government trying to control their economies (and their very lives) is the cause of the world's problems, not its solution.  Both Nations have had backwards laws on firearms and preservation of freedom, but nothing like Great Britain itself now has.

That these problems were all known before the election is troubling.  That the American people have not factored them into the Nation State federal government is more troubling, still.  Yet the US wellspring of revitalization starts at the bottom, not the top, which is why so many States moving to get responsible and responsive governments in place is heartening.  As the States are signatories to the US Constitution after in-State ratification by the people, it is these set of governments that hold the major key to renewal along with the people of the Nation as a whole.  If the socialist movements of the 20th century was to put more power into the hands of Nation State governments, America holds the card of that Nation State actually being formulated by the States and must serve all of their needs, not just any one of them or collection of them.  America was instituted on the self-evident observation that governments are instituted amongst men to preserve freedom and liberty and that it is very hard to give up any government even when it becomes contrary to the needs of its people.  The people will undergo great harm, even tyranny, before they finally have enough to change or abolish such government and to renew the tenets that government is given few things to do and must, actually, do them and leave the people to figure out the rest on their own.  First we must do all the stupid things, the good feeling things, the bass ackward things until we finally realize that we are far better with little government than with much of it.  Let us hope that we survive the troubled times ahead.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

-Winston Churchill

On voting

Yes another piece from my commentary at Hot Air, and it is pretty well self-contained as part of a Quotes of the Day thread, which can meander hither and yon on topics this one post-debate on Biden and Ryan.  I'm good at that hithering and yonning stuff and this time I wandered back to voting.  Again, as with all my commentary, it is in the 'as-is' format:

Just remember all the triumphalism on the Left is because of Joe Biden.

They are happy about Joe Biden, the least serious man in politics, who was sent out to rile them up.

No matter how happy the Left is, remember they are happy about Joe Biden… it is all they have left to show for their support of Obama and ideals that are bankrupting the Nation not just fiscally but morally and spiritually as well.

As Eastwood said – Biden the man who is a smile with a body behind it.

And the best part is that as people begin to see that Obama & Co. are tanking, the economy will improve. Remember what happened in OCT 2008? Gun sales went through the roof and small businesses began to pull back expansion plans, curtail future investments and set down to weather the storm.

The Left will attempt to claim vindication. Yet it is the course of events that the PEOPLE are doing that will change the course of the Nation. Not our freaking government. This the Left will never, ever understand, and they will attack you for the very idea that people should be free, actually CAN be free to lead a better life without the interference of government. Once this course begins to change this time, with the memory of what happened by not backing it fully under Reagan, this time it will start to sweep away all our notions of politics, education, energy, and production like no other time in history. The PEOPLE are about to declare the 20th century over and the 19th century ideas of the Left as done with. The Left wants Americans to be ordinary plebes, yet we hold the eternal truths as self-evident and we will be extra-ordinary citizens creating a better Nation so that all mankind will have a beacon to look up to and a standard to flock to.

That means holding ALL your elected officials to account: from dog catcher to President. We slacked off as a people and let our parties try to run things. That era not only can end but it must end and it is ending NOW. A Romney win is not something to then walk away from, but a reason to hold to your ideals and to keep on pushing at all levels of government to recognize your rights and liberties to be free FROM government and that we, the people, will take care of the rest of the stuff that we specifically do NOT hand over to government: caring for the poor, the sick, the elderly, the young, and our society. That is my job, your job and the job of all our fellow citizens, and we dare not let government even try to do them.

Why? Look where we are NOW that we HAVE let government even try to do them. This is the result.

An election is not an end goal but a statement from you of re-dedication to the cause of liberty and accountable government. It is the start of the process, not the end of it, which means it re-starts with each and every election.

Remember Joe Biden is all the Left has: the laughing spirit of derision against you, against liberty, against freedom, and meant to belittle our fellow citizens and our Nation to say that we are too stupid to lead our own lives freely. The man is an insult to us all.

You can’t get rid of stupid as it is one of the two infinites of the natural universe that Einstein coupled with space, and he wasn’t too sure about space.

But you can, assuredly, vote stupid out of office.

That task STARTS with an election.

And re-starts with each and every election at each and every level thereafter.

I am happy to vote in every election. It is my way to help safeguard freedom and liberty and it is my duty and job to do so. That doesn’t mean I have a light mood at each election and it is usually just the opposite: I keep my eye on the target through all the maelstrom so the deed that must be done is accomplished. Elections are too serious to get emotionally involved in. A duty, a job, and your means to safeguard freedom and liberty… a happy task but an earnest job not taken lightly.

ajacksonian on October 13, 2012 at 9:47 AM

I can remember the few times that I didn't vote, even in an off-year non-federal election, and those times revolved around a few topics.

First is too sick to vote.  I didn't have 'good health' at any point in my adult life and an upper respiratory tract infection could spiral from swollen glands to the awful green things from inner space in about two days and then leave me laid up for weeks recovering under antibiotics.  Other than that, with the onset of my catalepsy I couldn't really claim to track reality all that well, so that gets a hit.

Second is out looking for work.  When you spend the better part of a couple of years not at home, not in your home voting district and way before the Internet and world wide web, there was no way to keep up with what the local issues actually were.  To vote responsibly one must keep up with at least the basics, and distance killed that for me.  Also in my working life, I was in a major project that had so much time spent outside of town that I also lost track of local events as the project consumed my attention and spent my energy.  I was happy to do that project and it was worthwhile.

Third was still learning the political landscape for a couple of years out of High School.  That also was coupled with the first problem, too, and those were not happy years. 

Thus with 30 opportunities to cast my ballot, I have missed 8 of them and for only 2 of those instances can I say I was actually too unfamiliar with the topics to vote, which perhaps isn't good but there it is.

There have been times when I absolutely had no one to vote for by my own criteria, yet I voted on purely local issues and left a blank ballot for those races where nothing was satisfactory and I knew of no one, even myself, who would fit the job to write-in.  If memory serves I have written names in twice on local elections when the ballot system is set up for those things.

On the flip-side there are races when I had no clear idea of which candidate would serve better, because they would both serve about equally in my opinion and I let inspiration guide my hand.  And in one race, only, did I cast a vote that I could not in conscience give to either candidate, but knew that a third-party candidate would harm one candidate over another, and there is no long-form for explaining votes, so the short ballot must serve as a reminder to both parties to get their act together. 

After that I have generally voted down or against local spending of all sorts, save for sewer and water main upgrades: we need those as a civil society and those deserve backing to keep things running.  I've voted against school Olympic sized swimming pools, firehouses where there is already adequate coverage, parks where they aren't demanded by anyone, light rail, and other bits of crony spending that I don't see as gaining anything for the community.  Roads, bridges, sewers, water mains, electrical distribution stations... all of those get approval due to necessity.  New schools due to passing demographics, do not and I've been in schools run out of trailers that have been on-site for decades and see no suffering in the ability to teach in such places.

I am a member of a one-person party, who encourages each individual to be a one-person party and to reach out to all other parties (one and multi-person) so as to build a better way to run our republic by going across party lines.  If we must have parties, then it is best to have a fickle, non-partisan population willing to infest parties and then leave them when the louses show up, all the time stripping party structures of upper level power and prestige and putting power back down to the local and individual level.  Partisanship based on party will be the death of us yet.  I am devoted to my Nation and the liberty and freedom that we require our government to respect at all levels so that man can be free.  Good government has few things to do, short funding and is required to do the very, very few things it does in an exemplary way while staying within its budget which is what the taxpayers can afford... not what our government demands as tribute.  Government is the Punisher, that is its role, and only when that role is delimited to only that, can we keep government accountable to the people.  Anything else waters that down and is the basis for corruption giving the fertile ground of tyranny when it continues too long.

I am always happy to vote.

Yet, somehow, I never have a smile on my face when doing it.

It is a duty and an honor that my fellow citizens entrust this to me and I treat it with the solemnity it deserves because you have asked it of me via the means of Caesar.  If this is the form of which our Caesar takes, this republic with representative democracy to guide it, then I must render my judgment upon it to comply.  It is right and it is asked of me, and that rendering must take place.

I apologize for the times I didn't vote, I am not the best of all people to be sure.

I work hard to retain the recognition that we must self-govern and that your trust in me is not misplaced, even when I do not agree with you on the issues or candidates.

What happens inside that booth is between you and that which is all around us at all times.  Who and what you cast your vote for is only amenable to your conscience and, when all else fails, to inspiration in that solitude and let that be your guide.  You might be surprised that this does, actually, work if you but take the opportunity to listen to how you are spoken to alone with such a decision.

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote.

I ask it of you as a Citizen of the Republic of the United States of America.

Roots of constitutional government

The US Constitution stands in a long line of documents and agreements between the people of a Nation and their sovereign government, and is not an artifact of mere political compromise but rests on long standing ideas that go back to the very roots of English society, back to Engla-Land and before that to the original Anglo-Saxon invaders who would take up where Rome, in retreat, left off. Germanic and Scandinavian ways included such things as twice yearly gatherings to have the laws read and trials held, but these were trials where a jury of locals would decide a case, which was very different than the tradition of other parts of Europe and Rome at the time. A ruler or King was not separated from the law, but a part of it and the second gathering of the year was one in which complaints were heard locally and passed up to the King for hearing. From this there was not the harsh stratification of nobility as we come to know so well from the Middle Ages, for these Dark Age rulers in these conquered territories did not bring that tradition with them. From tradition comes the longest held part of how to decide law cases: jury trials by one's peers.

Through conquest and consolidation under King Alfred and his son Edgar, would arrive the spreading of the local shire governing region throughout all of the Island which had served the Anglo-Saxons so well in repulsing their cousin Danes and other Vikings. This system was put to a harsh test under King Ethelred II ('the unready') as King Sweyn of Denmark arrived for years of ravaging England after the prosperity that happened after the unification of the Island in the previous decades. When the Danes would subjugate or even come to threaten some towns or shires, they would demand payment in the thousands of pounds of precious metals. To pay off the Dane so as to be spared required annual tribute which introduced the concept of 'Danegeld' into the language. As it was said, it was easy to say that you would get rid of the Danegeld, but much harder to get rid of the Dane.

While Ethelred II had made some preparations, as the Battle of Maldon bears witness to, it came at a high price and was, in the end, a losing cause. By 1013 Ethelred and his Norman wife Emma had fled with their son Edward to the Norman held Isle of Wight which was in bad straights as it had been raided that year, as well. In early 1014 King Sweyn died and nobles of England invited back King Ethelred II to be their sovereign lord, but with some provisos attached. It turns out that a number of the nobles had been highly taxed and even had seen people in their lands taken into servitude by Ethelred, and so the resistance to the Danes might have been problematical for more than just military reasons. The overview of this agreement still can be found in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (which can be found at the Online Medieval and Classical Library), which had been the logbook composed by the Anglo-Saxon Kings to record in common language what had gone on in the Kingdom. King Alfred had seen this as a way of uniting peoples and its record of events gives a look into the society and happenings of the English people. The passage giving overview of the agreement from 1014 is as follows:

A.D. 1014. This year King Sweyne ended his days at Candlemas, the third day before the nones of February; and the same year Elfwy, Bishop of York, was consecrated in London, on the festival of St. Juliana. The fleet all chose Knute for king; whereupon advised all the counsellors of England, clergy and laity, that they should send after King Ethelred; saying, that no sovereign was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them better than he did before. Then sent the king hither his son Edward, with his messengers; who had orders to greet all his people, saying that he would be their faithful lord -- would better each of those things that they disliked -- and that each of the things should be forgiven which had been either done or said against him; provided they all unanimously, without treachery, turned to him. Then was full friendship established, in word and in deed and in compact, on either side. And every Danish king they proclaimed an outlaw for ever from England. Then came King Ethelred home, in Lent, to his own people; and he was gladly received by them all. Meanwhile, after the death of Sweyne, sat Knute with his army in Gainsborough until Easter; and it was agreed between him and the people of Lindsey, that they should supply him with horses, and afterwards go out all together and plunder. But King Ethelred with his full force came to Lindsey before they were ready; and they plundered and burned, and slew all the men that they could reach. Knute, the son of Sweyne, went out with his fleet (so were the wretched people deluded by him), and proceeded southward until he came to Sandwich. There he landed the hostages that were given to his father, and cut off their hands and ears and their noses. Besides all these evils, the king ordered a tribute to the army that lay at Greenwich, of 21,000 pounds. This year, on the eve of St. Michael's day, came the great sea-flood, which spread wide over this land, and ran so far up as it never did before, overwhelming many towns, and an innumerable multitude of people.

This compact is a contract between the nobles, that is those governing the shires and burrhs (later boroughs which are self-governing portions of a town) , which were the walled towns that fostered trade to make England prosperous, and their King. There are two sides in this, not just a ruler and his subjects, but a meeting of the people who are welcoming a King back if he make amends. This is a compact which is a contract to establish a sovereign leader: it is a constitution although not titled as such. What is seen is election of a leader by representatives of the people to get a fairer and more just government via clemency on both sides so as to confront an invader.

Unfortunately they were not victorious against the son of King Sweyn, Canute who would claim England as his own birthright as heir to King Sweyn. After his victory in 1016, King Canute would have the heads of the English nobility, the other heirs to the throne killed save those that were with Emma in Normandy. He would become the head of the English government, the English people and take all those places that predecessors had merely raided for tribute. He would do all of that before he was 20.

King Canute would not, however, disgrace those who fought against him and would, indeed, raise memorials to them and ensure that the line of Alfred were buried together. This was no mere bone thrown to assuage the English people as Canute would install his own people into the major sections of England but leave much of the underlying system of shires, boroughs and law-giving untouched. These sections would be given to Earls (Jarls in Danish) and this was an established system amongst the Norse dating back some centuries as a means to delegate power downwards when actual territory to rule became unwieldy in size. In 1017 he would marry Ethelred's widow, Emma, and establish the linkage between the Normans (after all the Normans were a Viking outland of Northmen) as well as legitimize his place in the royal lineage. By retaining Alfred's law system and continuing the two-way representation system that arose because of it, King Canute was becoming more than just a Danish invader conquering England: he was becoming English.

This is not as much a leap as one might expect as the Angles and Saxons had once been in that place we call Denmark today, but squeezed between the Danes and the Germanic peoples proper. Similarly the Vikings were as much about trade as about raiding and preferred the former as it was more profitable, and it was only those that resisted trade that got the blade, instead. Culturally Canute is not of very much different societal stock than the Anglo-Saxons in their Engla-land and, in some ways, by uniting with Emma he was reforging a common bond of society between these different geographic entities: sending English troops to Denmark to train, bringing the Frankified Norman customs to England and cementing that bond via marriage.

Further than that, the agreement of 1014, that one which put the status of the nobles (those lower nobility that survived, with the more powerful ones being deprived of power) into the same structure as there was with Ethelred. In other words, he agreed to his part of the contract if the rest of the nobility, not just those Danes he had put in charge, would agree to their part of it. Unlike other rulers of that era who assumed all power to themselves (indeed that would be a Frankish infusion into England), King Canute agreed to have limited powers.

Why?

The prior peace and prosperity had made England rich, extremely rich, so much so that even after all the decades of raids, the raiding of the English treasury and sending so much back to Denmark that there was still enough gold around to make a full-sized golden cross once Canute had become King in England. That is unheard of in any other region the Vikings had raided for so long, but in England there appeared to be a 'winning formula' that would bestow great wealth if the taxes could be agreeable to all.

This was important because he had so much to govern: all of England, Ireland, Normandy, Denmark, Norway, parts of Sweden. In becoming the Great Viking King, the responsibility of actually having to administer such a vast realm was daunting and to make it prosperous was essential. This means that, over time, as Earls and their families are shifted around that local nobility has a chance to establish itself in the system and to step up in ranking by demonstrating ability to govern.

What this represents is what in the US we call 'counties' under the States, with the States being similar to the multiple lands under a sovereign government. When a leader moves up from the 'county' level to the State level it is a demonstration of increased power within a given structure. Of course when the King dies, the Earls often begin to fight it out amongst themselves as these power bases over multiple shires, boroughs and towns means that they also have resources of their own: although a royal heir usually becomes King, in this early English system the King could be seen as a 'first amongst equals'. Thus the conflict that would arise between Godwin of Wessex and King Edward (Ethelred's son who becomes sole surviving to the throne) and it would pit a powerful Earl against a King seeking to consolidate his hold on the throne. In 1051 this nearly came to open civil war, save that the original compact between the nobles and the King was put into force when minor conflict in Dover between townsfolk and Godwin's people came to bloodshed, both sides were spoiling for a fight:

Then came they all to Gloucester to
the aid of the king, though it was late.  So unanimous were they
all in defence of the king, that they would seek Godwin's army if
the king desired it.  But some prevented that; because it was
very unwise that they should come together; for in the two armies
was there almost all that was noblest in England.  They therefore
prevented this, that they might not leave the land at the mercy
of our foes, whilst engaged in a destructive conflict betwixt
ourselves.  Then it was advised that they should exchange
hostages between them.  And they issued proclamations throughout
to London, whither all the people were summoned over all this
north end in Siward's earldom, and in Leofric's, and also
elsewhere; and Earl Godwin was to come thither with his sons to a
conference; They came as far as Southwark, and very many with
them from Wessex; but his army continually diminished more and
more; for they bound over to the king all the thanes that
belonged to Earl Harold his son, and outlawed Earl Sweyne his
other son.  When therefore it could not serve his purpose to come
to a conference against the king and against the army that was
with him, he went in the night away.

This was a veto on the King who had a superior position. Not necessarily support of Godwin either:

There was now assembled before the king (68)
Earl Siward, and Earl Leofric, and much people with them from the
north: and it was told Earl Godwin and his sons, that the king
and the men who were with him would take counsel against them;
but they prepared themselves firmly to resist, though they were
loth to proceed against their natural lord.  Then advised the
peers on either side, that they should abstain from all
hostility: and the king gave God's peace and his full friendship
to each party.  Then advised the king and his council, that there
should be a second time a general assembly of all the nobles in
London, at the autumnal equinox: and the king ordered out an army
both south and north of the Thames, the best that ever was.

When you are part of this sort of system you are limited, not just the King but each of the Earls as well. To go to war there must be agreement amongst the nobility and that nobility can stop hostilities when they hold the Nation's welfare in common above any petty factional disputes. Constitutional agreements via the compact is contractually obligating amongst the parties involved so that when one agrees to the compact is obligated by its strictures.


In 1052 there was a second instance in which Godwin was harried out to the Isle of Wight had gathered a number of ships and armed men to him and then went back to England. There were complaints to the King, as well, who then gathered ships and men and at London they met where the nobility, so key in brokering peace, no let the King know that his power had limits, as well:

On this occasion he
also contrived with the burgesses that they should do almost all
that he would.  When he had arranged his whole expedition, then
came the flood; and they soon weighed anchor, and steered through
the bridge by the south side.  The land-force meanwhile came
above, and arranged themselves by the Strand; and they formed
an angle with the ships against the north side, as if they wished
to surround the king's ships.  The king had also a great land-
force on his side, to add to his shipmen: but they were most of
them loth to fight with their own kinsmen -- for there was little
else of any great importance but Englishmen on either side; and
they were also unwilling that this land should be the more
exposed to outlandish people, because they destroyed each other.
Then it was determined that wise men should be sent between them,
who should settle peace on either side.  Godwin went up, and
Harold his son, and their navy, as many as they then thought
proper.  Then advanced Bishop Stigand with God's assistance, and
the wise men both within the town and without; who determined
that hostages should be given on either side.  And so they did.
When Archbishop Robert and the Frenchmen knew that, they took
horse; and went some west to Pentecost Castle, some north to
Robert's castle.  Archbishop Robert and Bishop Ulf, with their
companions, went out at Eastgate, slaying or else maiming many
young men, and betook themselves at once to Eadulf's-ness; where
he put himself on board a crazy ship, and went at once over sea,
leaving his pall and all Christendom here on land, as God
ordained, because he had obtained an honour which God disclaimed.
Then was proclaimed a general council without London; and all the
earls and the best men in the land were at the council.  There
took up Earl Godwin his burthen, and cleared himself there before
his lord King Edward, and before all the nation; proving that he
was innocent of the crime laid to his charge, and to his son
Harold and all his children.  And the king gave the earl and his
children, and all the men that were with him, his full
friendship, and the full earldom, and all that he possessed
before; and he gave the lady all that she had before. 

Again it was the power of the Earls that defused yet another bad situation and if the actual power of England was not easy to see before all of this, it was thereafter as it was not vested solely in the King but downwards to the local organizations and places, the shires and boroughs represented by the Earls. A King could attempt to strip an Earl of his power base, his lands that he governed, but that would only be with the long-term assent of the other Earls. By rallying to one of their own, the Earls demonstrated that they were the force behind the Nation, the King their leader.


With the death of King Edward the Confessor would come years of strife between Harold and Tosty (Tostig). Harold would swear to William of Normandy that he would be heir to the throne that covered both their lands, but that was not, of necessity, a promise without limits nor one that could be reneged as it was due to unfortunate circumstances of conflict and shipwreck that put Harold in such straights. William had a direct line of succession through Emma's family and this, when bolstered by Earl Harold would allow him to exercise that claim. What had dissolved from the time of King Canute was that wider Kingdom, which was now under local rule in Denmark, Norway and Sweden once more. Claimants to the English throne now existed in these lands as well as Normandy, so that after the death of King Edward would come conflict over who was to rule England. Yet the basics that had been established on the ground prior to the 11th century, put into place at the beginning of the of it and now recognized into the 12th century remained a durable part of constitutional history, which is to say the history of all constitutional movements.


Any leader of the Nation State, which is to say the head of the government of a Nation, had limits that could be imposed upon him or her by the Nation as a whole. Thus the Nation is the foremost part of the Nation State, and the State a mere subject to it. When this is reversed, when the State is made primary, there is tyrannical rule, barbaric rule, rule by force of will and whimsy of the rulers. Rulers who wish to have all power of the Nation to them respect no continuity of government or governing, there is no assurance of regularity of trials nor of the legal process. If any ruler were to set such limits, write them down and agree to them, the question would be: who would be on the other side of the table to accept the agreement? The very recognition that there needs to be regularity of government is a recognition that man is mortal while a Nation is durable beyond any single ruler or ruling oligarchy. Any oligarchy, in fact, is a distribution of power to more local levels for no matter how centralized the ruling contingent, those in an oligarchy represent smaller parts of a Nation. This can serve as the beginnings of a constitutionally limited system as those in an oligarchy will tend to see, as the Earls of England, that the ruler was a first amongst equals.


In the US the design of the Constitution is one that safeguards the power of the States and the people against the government of the Nation State. National power is directly stated in the Preamble as resting with the people, not the government, and that the government is granted sovereign power by the consent of the governed. This is the party of the first part, the people, telling what the terms of government are to those willing to take up the work of being the party of the second part, the government of the Nation's State. Thus the veto over such power rests not in the government but, as it was in the time of Ethelred II, in the signatory parties: the States and the ultimate power now asserted directly the people who are the ones that make the Nation.


From a few lines of an agreement done centuries ago, the outlines of what powers any State can have are laid out. What had been a rough and ready understanding of what drives Nations and what their powers were under law of nations, was becoming something beaten out during the people who were the Nation and those who would wish to govern it. Those wishing to undo this are not civilized nor putting forward the cause of knowledge and understanding of why the power of the State must be limited.