The Free Individual is greater than the State

The Free Individual is greater than the State

By Jon Rappoport

In a sane society, the Bill of Rights would be studied in great detail, in every school and college.

The historical incursions on, and the crimes against, the Bill of Rights would be laid bare and excoriated.

“Grand juries” of students would be formed to investigate, in detail, these incursions and crimes, and wherever possible track them to their sources.

Reading the Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, it is plain that the natural rights of the individual are confirmed—and also, the attempt to exercise any sort of excessive power over the individual is shackled.

Why?

Because the Founders saw the handwriting on the wall, engraved for centuries in totalitarian regimes and theocracies.

Here are the basics of the Bill of Rights:

Freedom of speech, religion, and the press.

The right to bear arms.

Housing of soldiers: “No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

Protection of rights to life, liberty, and property.

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

“In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.”

Excessive bails, fines, and punishments are forbidden.

“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

What do these 10 Amendments say about the individual? They say he is of greater importance than the State.

They say the purpose of basic law is protection of the freedom of the individual.

They say that, no matter how many scurrilous critics and logic-choppers may come along and parse the Bill of Rights to their advantage and against the individual, these critics should be cast aside, at the very least.

They say that there is something potentially glorious in the individual.

They say today’s collectivists are deluded, and in many cases are consciously attempting to hijack the basic notion of freedom—and substitute instead, a plethora of free goods and services derived from the State, which collects overbearing taxes and invents money out of thin air, for the purpose of creating unfree and dependent individuals.

Most importantly, in today’s society, these 10 Amendments stand on their own, as robust and profound Ideas, no matter who first conceived them, no matter what those men’s motives may or may not have been at the time of conception.

The ideas are alive. Now.

Centers of education may promote the decimation of the Bill of Rights, may attack the primary sources, may try to wage war against these ideas, but their assault is transparent to those who can see and think.

Those little would-be dictators of the mind are themselves already slaves. And so they want to make other slaves.

Europe, whose great thinkers invented the cradle of liberty, is falling under the sway of collectivist vultures. As a group, those gnawing birds of prey are centered in the European Union, the “share and care” face of fascism.

During decades of unearthing what corrupt European and American fascists have been trying to achieve, I have seen individuals rise up from the swamp of sticky economic, political, and spiritual collectivism and reassert and regain their natural freedom.

It’s a sight to behold.

It embodies a dawn that reawakens the mind and spirit.

It’s a call to all of life.

It reestablishes the great adventure of living and making a future of one’s own choosing.

The education system blacks that out. Major media do, too.

The whole idea of public education, at the beginning, in America, was to educate children about what it meant to be a free and responsible citizen in the new Republic.

That mission was abandoned.

In the early 20th century, powerful foundations (Carnegie, at the forefront) completely derailed education by removing significant study of the founding documents of the nation. This was no accident. It was an effort to control society, to make it over in the image of worker-drones fitting into slots, for “the greatest good of the greatest number.”

From its inception, the Carnegie Foundation was consciously focused on the most effective way to control a population. Its first choice was war. In its absence, the number two method, it decided, was education.

The individual, nevertheless, still possesses his natural freedoms. These freedoms are prior to any laws enacted to confirm them.

But the individual has to find/assert those freedoms within himself, on his own.

His future rises and falls on that profound effort, which begins with recognizing he is separate from any and all forms of the collectivist “equality” glob…

William James, American philosopher (1902): “Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. ‘I am no such thing,’ it would say; ‘I am myself, myself alone’.”

Filed under: Uncategorized Jon Rappoport has worked as a free-lance investigative reporter for over 30 years. http://nomorefakenews.com/