A Third World Swamp

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In Defense of Sedition
-Dr. Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Time magazine's Joe Klein recently appeared on a Sunday news show where he accused Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of "sedition" because of their criticisms of the Obama administration's expenditure of trillions of dollars of corporate welfare in the form of bailouts; its Soviet-style nationalization of automobile, banking, student loan, and mortgage industries; its historically wild spending and borrowing binge; its forcing of socialized medicine down our throats in the face of overwhelming public opposition; and its plans to tax American capitalism into bankruptcy. Anyone who criticizes such things should be thrown into the Gulag, says Klein. Another talking head on the same television show as Klein screeched that Rush Limbaugh should also be indicted for "sedition" for the crime of criticizing King Obama.

Sedition, Joe Klein informed us (reading off of a napkin), is a threat to "the authority of the state." But the key question is: authority to do what? Does the American state have unlimited "authority" to do everything and anything the Marxist in the White House, the former senator from ACORN, can dream up? If they can nationalize automobile companies, banks, and the healthcare industry, do they also have the "authority" to nationalize the grocery industry, home building, steel manufacturing, and everything else? Joe Klein obviously believes so. In so doing, he supports the "authority" of a totalitarian state. Opposing totalitarian government is "sedition" according to Joe Klein and his fellow network "news" show talking heads.

The original design of the American government was that the only "authority" the central government was to have was powers delegated to it by the free, independent, and sovereign states in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. All others are the responsibility of the people, respectively, and the states, according to the Tenth Amendment, which Thomas Jefferson considered to be the cornerstone of the document. These powers were delegated to the central government for the benefit of the sovereign states, who appointed the central government as their agent – mostly for issues regarding war and foreign policy – by adopting the Constitution. That's why treason is defined by the U.S. Constitution in Article 3, Section 3, as follows: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in waging War against them, or adhering to their Enemies, and giving them Aid and Comfort . . ." As in all the founding documents, "United States" is in the plural, signifying that the free and independent states were united in delegating certain enumerated powers for their own mutual benefit. Thus, "waging War against them" means the states. Waging war against the free and independent states is what constitutes treason under the U.S. Constitution. That's why Lincoln's invasion of the Southern states was the very definition of Treason.

rest:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo184.html