CIVICS TEST FOR THOSE WISHING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Imagine if the incumbent president and all of his Republican challengers were required to respond to a civics test so as to determine their suitability for office. The test would concern the constitutionality of three things: (1) the current money and financial systems (incl. foreign aid); (2) the conducting of undeclared foreign wars, and; (3) the recent legislative attempt to deprive the People of their unalienable Rights.under §1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Instead of debate after stage-managed debate, why not insist on having each prospective office-seeker commit to responding to this little civics test? After all, if the underlying fundamentals of our laws are simply ignored, how can an aspirant to the nation’s highest elective office be tolerated and even seriously considered? How can such a person be acting in the best interests of the People, viz., the true Sovereign for whom our system of government was established?

Accordingly, I challenge President Obama and the Republicans seeking the nomination to respond to my little civics test, as presented below, by unequivocally stating their respective positions in essay form:

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The U.S. Constitution of 1787 was a world novelty. No nation prior to this time had a written constitution in place.[1] Since its adoption in 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been the supreme law of the land. Today it consists of seven articles and twenty-six amendments.[2] Do you believe in adhering to our Constitution?

MONEY
Article I, Section 8, Cl. 5, reserves to the U.S. Congress the power to create money,[3] i.e., to control, exercise, and benefit from the power of the purse for the People as a whole (instead of glutting the avarice of special banking interests as agents of economic globalization). How little attention is paid to the unconstitutional monetary system of fiat money and the financial system of fractional reserve banking, conducted by private banksters[4] under the auspices of an unconstitutional cartel misleadingly referred to as the “Federal Reserve System”[5] (financed by the illegal activities of its collection agency, the IRS). And how unquestioningly the populace and the courts accept Wall Street’s securitization of mortgage loans as the ingenuity of an enterprising “capitalist” system, hardly stopping to see the corroding effect this has had on titles to real property and the hostile assault that its unlegislated (MERS) transfer mechanisms has had on the states’ venerable, time-tested land records systems. It is truly ironic that such arguments might at first blush seem quaint or outlandish, or even be considered “ahead of their time” when their validity can be traced to ancient moorings in our Constitution (as well as in commercial and real property laws).

The States are prohibited from creating money under Article I, Sec. 10, Cl.1.[6] If the states are not permitted to create money and thus increase the money supply, it hardly seems possible that Congress delegated that power to private banks to do so, even if it could lawfully do so and it cannot. It is hoped that the courts will begin to scrutinize more closely the inherent unlawfulness and inequities of what today pass for the accepted norm. In fact, is it not incumbent upon all three branches of government to consider the illegitimacy of the whole monetary system as a perversion of the highest law of the land?[7] And where in the U.S. Constitution does it permit foreign aid to be distributed? If there is no constitutional power to do so, how is it that such a violation of the U.S. Constitution persists? Do you support foreign aid?

UNDECLARED WAR
Article I, Section 8, Cl. 11 reserves to the U.S. Congress the power to declare War. A president has no right to effectively declare War by committing military troops and assets by simple fiat. In fact, under Article II, Sec. 2, Cl. 1 “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;”(emphasis added) This condition means that in the absence of a declared War, the President is NOT Commander in Chief. Given these constitutional hurdles, how are our military intrusions worldwide legally valid and acceptable?

UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
The first ten Amendments taken together are known as the Bill of Rights. These are a further articulation of the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate passed legislation purporting to do away with the rights of the People as enumerated in the Bill of Rights. They acted in reaction to some amorphous threat of “terrorism.” Can a statute efface unalienable rights of the People? Explain.

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As the 2012 presidential election gears up, the nation is in the strange position of allowing a sitting president to continue in office despite his failure to “defend, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” pursuant to his oath of office as prescribed in Article 2, Sec. 1, Cl. 8.

§ President Obama has accepted the current fiat money system and fractional reserve banking of the Federal Reserve System. In fact, he has bailed it out and done everything he can to perpetuate that system;
§ President Obama has not closed Guantanamo Bay, has not really ceased hostilities in Iraq, and has intensified the undeclared war in Afghanistan, and hostilities in Pakistan and Iran and elsewhere; and
§ President Obama has signed the despicable legislation passed by Congress that purports to strip the People of their unalienable, constitutionally-protected rights.

By these numerous constitutional violations should President Obama be impeached under Article 2, Sec. 4?

Should those in Congress who voted to bailout the banksters, who do not question the constitutionality of our money and the status quo financial system, who vote for (undeclared) War expenditures and otherwise endorse military hostilities and the giving away of foreign aid, and who voted to deny the People their unalienable rights – should these Congressmen and women be impeached for their failure to support the Constitution of the United States as they are required to do under Article VI, Cl. 3?

Are not their votes and support, and the president’s failures to act and his unconstitutional actions, tantamount to treason?

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Footnotes:

1. The French Constitution of 1792 was soon to follow, and from this era onwards there was a movement in every country (except in the Habsburg empire, and Britain, the great mother of anomalies) towards political reform, or national independence, or both, which anchors the structures of liberty in a written constitution with the force of law.

2. Actually twenty-seven if you count the Sixteenth Amendment. But this amendment was never properly ratified, and was wrongfully certified by the Secretary of State. Benson & Beckman, The Law That Never Was (1985). See, http://www.amazon.com/Law-that-Never-Was-Amendment/dp/B0006ELT78

3. The right to “coin Money, regulate the value thereof…”

4. Farrell, Joseph P., Babylon’s Banksters: The Alchemy of Deep Physics, High Finance and Ancient Religion (2010); Astle, David, The Babylonian Woe (undated), last retrieved at http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/the_babylonian_woe.pdf on Feb. 25, 2011

5. Brown, Ellen H., Web of Deb: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System -- The Sleight of Hand That Has Trapped Us in Debt and How We Can Break Free (2007, 2008)

6. “No State shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…”

7. Vieira, Edwin, Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution, (2002, 2011); also see Dr. Vieira’s instructive five-part lecture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6hYECl91hY&playnext=1&list=PLF9398A065ED10D8F

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Jonathan D. Suss is an attorney licensed in Maryland who publishes occasional articles, currently making a marginal living as a blues piano player and woodworker. He can be contacted at theo4b@gmail.com and at www.stubbyknuckles.com