“Secret society is a term used to describe a variety of organizations. Although the exact meaning of the term is disputed, several of the definitions advanced indicate a degree of secrecy and secret knowledge, which might include denying membership or knowledge of the group, negative consequences for acknowledging one's membership, strong ties between members of the organization, and rites or rituals which outsiders are not permitted to observe.

Definition:

Several definitions for the term have been put forward. The term “secret society” is used to describe fraternal organizations that may have secret ceremonies, ranging from the common and innocuous (collegiate fraternities) to mythical organizations described in conspiracy theories as immensely powerful, with self-serving financial or political agendas, global reach, and often luciferian beliefs.

Application of the term is often hotly disputed, as it can be seen as pejorative.

Therefore, the criteria that can be adopted as a definition for the term are important for which organizations any one definition would include or exclude.

Alan Axelrod, author of the International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders, defines a secret society where:

·  The organization is exclusive

·  It claims to own special secrets

·  It shows a strong inclination to favor its own

David V. Barrett, author of Secret Societies: From the Ancient and Arcane to the Modern and Clandestine, uses slightly different terms to define what does and does not qualify as a secret society. He defines it as any group that possesses the following characteristics:

·  It has “carefully graded and progressed teachings”

·  Teachings are “available only to selected individuals”

·  Teachings lead to “hidden (and ‘unique’) truths”

·  Truths bring “personal benefits beyond the reach and even the understanding of the uninitiated.”

Barrett goes on to say that “a further characteristic common to most of them is the practice of rituals which non-members are not permitted to observe, or even to know the existence of.” Unfortunately, Barrett’s definition would rule out many organizations called secret societies; (American college fraternities do not have graded teachings, nor did groups like the Carbonari, the Know Nothing Whigs or any of the political secret societies). Indeed any author can construct a definition so that it includes or excludes a specific group.”

Collegiate Secret Societies In North America: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegiate_secret_societies_in_North_America

These are pertinent excerpts from this article:

“There are many collegiate secret societies in North America. They vary greatly in their levels of secrecy and independence from their universities. As the term is used in this article, a secret society is a collegiate society where significant effort is made to keep affairs, membership rolls, signs of recognition, initiation, or other aspects secret from the public.

Some collegiate secret societies are referred to as ‘class societies’, which restrict membership to one class year. Most class societies are restricted to the senior class, and are therefore also called senior societies on many campuses.

Categorization:

There is no strict rule on the categorization of secret societies. Secret societies can have ceremonial initiations, secret signs of recognition (gestures, handshakes, passwords), formal secrets, (the ‘true’ name of the society, a motto, or a society history); but, college fraternities or “social fraternities” have the same, and some of these elements can also be a part of literary societies, singing groups, editorial boards, and honorary and pre-professional groups. Some secret societies have kept their membership secret, for example, Seven Society, and some have not, like Skull and Bones (the Yale societies had published their membership lists in the yearbooks and the Yale Daily News).

One key concept in distinguishing secret societies from fraternities is that, on campuses that have both kinds of organizations, one can be a member of both, (that is, membership is not mutually exclusive). Usually, being a member of more than one fraternity is not considered appropriate, because that member would have divided loyalties; however, typically, there is not an issue being a member of a secret society and a fraternity, because they are not considered similar organizations or competing organizations.

An especially difficult problem is the degree to which any one society is an actual society or is simply an honorary designation. Phi Beta Kappa, for example, was a true secret society, until after its secrets were divulged, the society continued on. It claims today to still be an actual society that has meetings, conducts its affairs, and is a living social entity, however membership for most members consists of one evening’s initiation, and no more, which would make the society completely an honorary in most people’s eyes.

Many such societies exist which operate as honoraries on one campus, and which may have been at one time actual meeting societies, and which are kept alive by one or two dedicated local alumni or an alumni affairs or Dean’s office person, who see to it that an annual initiation are held every year. Some of these frankly state that they are honoraries, other seek to perpetuate the image of a continuing active society where there is none.

While there are some guideline criteria for the neutral observer to understand what sort of society any given organization is, much of the analysis reverts to what any one society has been traditionally understood to be. There are additional means, such as societies that were more or less explicitly established in emulation of some previous secret society, or using historical records to show that society X was created out of society Y.

Common traits:

There are several common traits among these societies. The pattern for many of these societies has been set by practices at Yale. For example, many societies have two part names, which follow the pattern set by Yale’s Skull and Bones or Scroll and Key.

The Yale societies also limited their membership to 15, sometimes 16, in a class year, and it is common to find similar numerical limits in many of these societies. Extensive mortuary imagery is associated with many secret societies, maintaining a pretense of great seriousness, and, again following Yale, clubhouses are often called “tombs.”

Tapping:

The archetypical selection process for entry into a collegiate secret society began at Yale University by a process called tapping. On a publicly announced evening, Yale undergraduates would assemble informally in the College Yard. Current members of Yale’s secret societies would walk through the crowd and literally tap a prospective member on the shoulder and then walk with him up to the tapped man’s dorm room.

There, in private, they would ask him to become a member of their secret society, of which the inductee had the choice of accepting or rejecting the offer of membership. During this process, it was publicly known who was being tapped for the coming year.

Today, the selection process is not quite as formal, but is still public. Formal tapping days used to exist at Berkeley, and still exist in a much more formal setting at Missouri.

History:

Phi Beta Kappa of 1776 is considered the first of the college secret societies, as well as the first of the fraternities. The society did have a rudimentary initiation, and there was some expectation of secrecy about its transactions. That society had its secrets exposed in the mid 1830’s by students at Harvard University acting under the patronage of John Quincy Adams. It has operated since the 1840s as a non-secret society. It is true that the spread of Phi Beta Kappa to different institutions did cause competitors to be established. Some of these competitors, like Kappa Alpha (1825) developed into what are known today as college fraternities.

There was a second strain of development. At Yale University, Chi Delta Theta (1821), and Skull & Bones (1832), were founded and they became the antecedents of a different ‘family tree’ of societies properly known as class societies.

Skull & Bones aroused competition on campus, bringing forth Scroll & Key (1841), and later Wolf’s Head (1883), among students in the senior class. But the prestige of the senior societies was able to keep the very influential fraternities Alpha Delta Phi and Psi Upsilon from ever becoming full four year institutions at Yale. They remained junior class societies there. There were also sophomore and freshman societies at Yale as well. A stable system of eventually eight class societies (two competing chains of four class societies each) was in place by the late 1840s.

Delta Kappa Epsilon is actually a highly successful junior class society, founded at Yale in 1844. None of the 51 chapters the parent chapter spawned operates as a junior society, but DKE did come from the class society system. Likewise, Alpha Sigma Phi started out as a Yale sophomore society and now has 68 chapters, (although, again, none of Alpha Sigma Phi’s chapters have remained sophomore societies).

The development of class societies spread from Yale to northeastern campuses. Seniors at neighboring Wesleyan established a senior society, Skull & Serpent (1865), and second society, originally a chapter of Skull and Bones, but then independent as a sophomore society, Theta Nu Epsilon (1870), which began to drastically increase the number of campuses with class societies. William Raimond Baird noted in the 1905 edition of his Manual that “In addition to the regular fraternities, there are in the Eastern colleges many societies which draw members from only one of the undergraduate classes, and which have only a few features of the general fraternity system.”

Kappa Sigma Theta, Phi Theta Psi, Delta Beta Xi, Delta Sigma Phi, were all sophomore societies at Yale, and the two large freshman societies of Delta Kappa and Kappa Sigma Epsilon lived until 1880. Delta Kappa established chapters at Amherst, the University of North Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Dartmouth College, and Centre College. Kappa Sigma Epsilon had chapters at Amherst, Rensselaer Polytechnic and Dartmouth. Other class societies existed at Brown, Harvard, Syracuse, Colgate, Cornell, and other Northeastern institutions.

Theta Nu Epsilon spread to about 120 colleges and universities, but many of its chapters operated as three year societies where operating as a class year society was inappropriate.

It is from this class society historical base, and the desire to emulate the most well known of all the class societies, Skull & Bones, that senior societies in particular began to spread nationally between 1900 and 1930. There are also junior class, sophomore, and freshman class societies to be found at campuses across the country today.

Significant individual institutions:

**These are other Secret Societies and/or organizations-You Decide:

Skull and Bones: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_%26_Bones

Bilderberg Group: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and The New World Order: By William Blasé:

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/Council_Foreign_Relations.htm

The Power Elite: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Elite

The Power Elite Exposed:

http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=PowerEliteExposed

These are pertinent and disturbing excerpts from this article that should make us wonder whether our Constitution is worth the paper its written on-You Decide:

“For those who may be confused by the controversies surrounding the “New World Order”, a One-World-Government, and American concern over giving the UN more power; those unaware of the issues involved; and those wishing more background, I offer the following:

Originally presented for an Honors Class, “Dilemmas of War and Peace,” at New Mexico State University, the paper was ridiculed and characterized by Dr. Yosef Lapid, (an acknowledged and locally quoted “expert” on Terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs) as “paranoid... possibly a symptom of mental illness.” You may judge for yourself.

Citing source data is the “scientific method,” but does not seem to apply to “Conspiracy Theories.” A thousand sources may be quoted, yet will not convince the “skeptics,” the “realists.” It seems to me the “symptoms of mental illness” are on their side, if they refuse to look at evidence (“There are none so blind as those who WILL not see”); or perhaps something more sinister is at work, such as a knowledge of the truth, that does not want YOU to know.

To be paranoid means to believe in delusions of danger and persecution. If the danger is real, and the evidence credible, then it cannot be delusional. To ignore the evidence, and hope that it CANNOT be true, is more an evidence of mental illness.

The issue involves much more than a difference of philosophy, or political viewpoint. Growing up in the midst of the “Cold War,” our generation was taught that those who attempted to abolish our national sovereignty and overthrow our Constitutional government were committing acts of treason. Please judge for your self if the group discussed is guilty of such.

If one group is effectively in control of national governments and multinational corporations; promotes world government through control of media, foundation grants, and education; and controls and guides the issues of the day; then they control most options available.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the financial powers behind it, have done all these things, and promote the “New World Order”, as they have for over seventy years.

The CFR is the promotional arm of the Ruling Elite in the United States of America. Most influential politicians, academics and media personalities are members, and it uses its influence to infiltrate the New World Order into American life.

Its’ “experts” write scholarly pieces to be used in decision making, the academics expound on the wisdom of a united world, and the media members disseminate the message.

To understand how the most influential people in America came to be members of an organization working purposefully for the overthrow of the Constitution and American sovereignty, we have to go back at least to the early 1900’s, though the story begins much earlier (depending on your viewpoint and beliefs).

That a ruling power elite does indeed control the U.S. government behind the scenes has been attested to by many Americans in a position to know. Felix Frankfurter, Justice of the Supreme Court (1939-1962), said: “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.” In a letter to an associate dated November 21, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote, “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” February 23, 1954,

Senator William Jenner warned in a speech: “Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded.”

Baron M.A. Rothschild wrote, “Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”

All that is needed to effectively control a government is to have control over the nation’s money: a central bank with a monopoly over the supply of money and credit. This had been done in Western Europe, with the creation of privately owned central banks such as the Bank of England.

Georgetown professor Dr. Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s mentor while at Georgetown) wrote about the goals of the investment bankers who control central banks: “... nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole... controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”

The Bank of the United States (1816-36), an early attempt at an American central bank, was abolished by President Andrew Jackson, who believed that it threatened the nation.

He wrote: “The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government, the distress it had wantonly produced...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution...if the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Does that not describe the situation in America today?”

**These articles seem to give credence to excerpts from the above articles, which speak to “Conspiracy Theories” –You Decide:  

Culture Of Conspiracy: The Birthers: Posted on Politico-By Ben Smith-On March 1, 2009:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19450.html

These are pertinent excerpts from this article:

“Bill Clinton had the Vince Foster “murder.” George W. Bush had 9/11 Truth. And the new administration has brought with it a new culture of conspiracy: The Birthers. ??

Out of the gaze of the mainstream and even the conservative media is a flourishing culture of advocates, theorists and lawyers, all devoted to proving that Barack Obama isn’t eligible to be president of the United States.

Viewed as irrelevant by the White House, and as embarrassing by much of the Republican Party, the subculture still thrives from the conservative website WorldNetDaily, which claims that some 300,000 people have signed a petition demanding more information on Obama’s birth, to Cullman, Alabama, where Sen. Richard Shelby took a question on the subject at a town hall meeting last week. ??

Their confinement to the fringe hasn’t cooled the passion of believers; the obscure New York preacher James Manning turned up at a National Press Club session in December to declare the president “the most notorious criminal in the history not just of America, but of this entire planet.” 

A quick reality check, before we dive in: The challenges to Obama’s eligibility have no grounding in evidence. Courts across the country have summarily rejected the movement’s theory — that Obama can’t be a citizen because his father wasn’t —as a misreading of U.S. law; and Hawaii officials, along with contemporary birth announcements, affirm that Obama was in fact born in Honolulu in 1961. ??

But belief in obscure, discredited theories is a constant in a country with a history of partisan division — a country in which, a recent survey showed, 34 percent of the public believes in UFOs and 24 percent believes in witches.. ??

But the thriving birth-obsessed fringe also poses political risks and opportunities for the Obama White House, coming as it does after a campaign that devoted a substantial effort to rebutting another, now fading, myth — that Obama is a Muslim who would insist on being sworn in on the Koran. 

The risk, of course, is the growth of a segment of the population, however small, that views the president as illegitimate. ??”Some individuals and groups who are opposed to Obama’s presidency want an ‘acceptable’ reason to cite to convince other individuals and groups who might be on the fence to join in their way of thinking,” said Patricia Turner, who studies rumors at the University of California, Davis. “The notion that his presidency is actually in violation of the Constitution has a fundamentally patriotic appeal.” ??

The opportunity for the White House:

It’s one of which some conservatives are sharply aware — that the Birthers may discredit Obama’s more mainstream enemies. 

“At some level, they’re not that bad to have around because it reminds people that under the mainstream conservative press there’s this bubbling up of really irrational hatred for the guy,” said former Clinton White House press secretary Jake Siewert. ??

Siewert recalled that his predecessor, Mike McCurry, sometimes deliberately called on a conservative radio host, Lester Kinsolving, just to undercut more mainstream criticism of the president.

“He would let them ask a question specifically to take the heat off the more legitimate line of questioning, maybe, and remind people that there were people out there who really had some wacko views,” Siewert recalled. Conservatives see that hazard. ??

The conservative talk show host Michael Medved recently referred to the movement’s leaders as “crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters” who are “the worst enemy of the conservative movement.” ??

“It makes us look weird. It makes us look crazy. It makes us look demented. It makes us look sick, troubled, and not suitable for civilized company,” he mourned. ??

One of the lead anti-Obama lawyers, Orly Taitz, a California dentist with a degree from an online law school, promptly threatened to sue Medved for defamation. Taitz, whose clients include soldiers challenging Obama’s citizenship, has called on her blog’s readers to “fight these communist Nazi thugs and hoodlums that took over our government,” and told POLITICO that the wide refusal to take her case seriously is “totalitarian.” ?

The White House is, presently, ignoring the birth certificate questions, having released an official copy of the Hawaii certificate during the presidential campaign.

The press aide once tasked with quashing viral rumors, Ben LaBolt, no longer follows the fringe. But lawyers for the Democratic National Committee and for Obama have been steadily batting down a stream of lawsuits, winning motions to dismiss the suits in courts from Pennsylvania to Hawaii, from the state level to the United States Supreme Court. ??

To believers, the legal engagement itself is evidence that something’s afoot. ??”[Obama] is spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to keep this information from getting out,” said Gary Kreep, the lawyer representing former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who sued Obama in California to prevent the state from certifying its election results. ??

Keyes recently called the citizenship issue “the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen” and warned of “chaos, confusion and civil war.” ?

Kreep has been battling Obama’s California lawyer, Fredric Woocher, to release the president’s records from Occidental College on the theory that they might provide information about his citizenship. ??

Woocher has threatened to seek sanctions against Kreep for pursuing the case. ??”This suit, like all of the others that have been filed challenging Obama’s qualifications for the Presidency, is frivolous,” he said in an email to POLITICO, adding that he is, in fact, working pro bono.

“There is absolutely no truth to the stories about the untold millions supposedly being paid to us,” he said. ??

Most of the lawsuits seek documents and express dissatisfaction with the State of Hawaii’s refusal to release for public inspection Obama’s original birth certificate rather than the notarized copy typically issued.

The state’s governor, Linda Lingle, has attested to the authenticity of the birth certificate, and Hawaii law forbids its release; Kreep blamed Democratic control of Hawaii for the refusal to release it. (Lingle is a Republican.)

My Note: Please refer to the following article that adamantly refutes the above paragraph, which states that the Governor of Hawaii attested to the authenticity of the birth certificate-You Decide:

Judge dismisses Obama lawsuit over lack of standing: Posted on Sonoran News-By Linda Bentley-On October 29, 2008:

http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2008/081029/FrntPgJudge.html

This is a pertinent excerpt from this article:

“Following Obama’s one-day trip to Hawaii last Thursday to visit his “deathly ill” grandmother, Lingle placed Obama’s birth records under seal and instructed the Hawaii Department of Health, under no condition may it provide access to the original document unless Obama authorizes it to be released.”

Sonoran News has since received the following (by e-mail) from Russell Pang, Chief of Media Relations, Office of the Governor:

“Aloha??

We would like to request an immediate retraction in Linda Bentley’s Oct. 29 article “Judge dismisses Obama lawsuit over lack of standing; Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle seals Obama’s birth records.”  ??

The subhead, and the statement in the article, “Lingle placed Obama’s birth records under seal and instructed the Hawaii Department of Health, under no condition may it provide access to the original document unless Obama authorizes it to be released,” are not true.??

The Governor did not make any order relating to this matter.  Vital records are administered through the state Department of Health.”

End of Excerpt.

The suits share a vague, underlying notion that Obama must be some sort of foreigner, probably Kenyan, Indonesian or British, though none have any evidence or a coherent narrative to support the claim.

Some argue that while Obama was born in the United States, the fact that his father was a British subject should rule him out - an interpretation that may also, inconveniently, have made President Chester Arthur ineligible to serve, and which goes against long-settled law that American citizenship is conferred by birth in the United States.

Others imagine that Obama was smuggled into the country as an infant, a claim contradicted by state records and contemporaneous birth announcements in two Honolulu papers. ?

The movement has also faced internal divisions. Kreep, a well-known conservative litigator, expressed some discomfort with his main East Coast counterpart, Phil Berg, a former Pennsylvania prosecutor who has also sued President George W. Bush to claim that he was complicit in the September 11 attacks. ??”I don’t ascribe to all his theories about 9/11 and all that,” Kreep said of Berg. ??

The movement has its occasional moments in the sun. When Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media hinted darkly at citizenship questions at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he was loudly applauded, and the clip of his speech circulated with equal speed among birth certificate theorists and liberal activists.

David Emery, an expert on urban legends who writes for About.com, said the citizenship rumor has been fueled by an unusually “deep well of revulsion toward Barack Obama himself, and rage.” ??

“Thanks to the relentless agitation of the conspiracy theorists and the sheer quantity of hypothetical scenarios and legal arguments floating around, they’ve clearly succeeded in planting unreasonable doubts in reasonable people’s minds,” he said.??

But, ignored by the left and the mainstream media and dismissed by the courts, the citizenshp movement find its bitterest disappointments coming from the right. ??

“Untold numbers of people have asked us to look into it,” said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, which recently sued to block Hillary Clinton, on technical grounds connected to her Senate seat, from taking the position of secretary of state. ?

“When we sued over Hillary ineligibility there were a lot of folks saying, ‘Why weren’t you suing over Obama’s ineligibility?’” he said.. ??Fitton said he hadn’t “seen any credible evidence Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen eligible for the presidency.” ??

“If people understood better what the law is, I don’t think they’d be as concerned as they are,” he said. ??

Others have been less polite. Conservative bloggers regularly mock the “Birthers,” as they’re dismissively known, just as liberal blogs like DailyKos purged the 9/11 “Truthers” from their ranks in the Bush years. ?

The conspiracy theorists are “embarrassing and destructive” the conservative activist David Horowitz wrote recently. ??Even Kreep, who was the toast of the conservative movement for representing the anti-immigration Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, has found the work a bit thankless. ?

“They say, ‘Get a life,’” he said of his fellow conservatives,” he said. Meanwhile, the Birthers’ persistence has prompted another, competing conspiracy theory on the right. ??

“I’m not a conspiracist, but this could be a very big conspiracy to make conservatives disgrace themselves,” Medved said.”

Obama Faction Again Shows Contempt for the Constitution - ALAN KEYES: “Loyal to Liberty”-Posted on America’s Independent Party National Committee- By Alan Keyes-On February 28, 2009:

http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=2690&posts=1

These are pertinent excerpts from this article:

“The U.S. Constitution plainly states that only “the People of the several states” can elect representatives to the Congress of the United States. Despite this undeniable restriction, the U.S. Senate has voted to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives.

According to a story in the Washington Post “The House is expected to approve the D.C. vote bill next week, and President[sic] Obama has indicated he will sign it into law. “

Thus in the near future we will witness the unique spectacle of a Federal bill signing ceremony in which an individual exercising Constitutionally questionable authority as President of the United States will purport to sign into law a bill that unquestionably violates the Constitution.

Unlike some other historic “firsts” daily held up for our obeisance in connection with the present occupant of the White House, this one undoubtedly deserves great attention.

As Senator Mitch McConnell (Ky.) has pointed out the President, and any members of Congress who vote for the bill in question, certainly know that it is unconstitutional. McConnell fails to note however that their willful disregard for that fact places each and every one of them incontestably in violation of their sworn oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

By now most reasonably well informed citizens of this country are aware that Barack Obama has refused to release documents needed to establish the fact that he satisfies another clear and explicit Constitutional requirement, to wit, that “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President”.

Acting in defense of the Supreme Law of the Land citizens, now including military people conscientiously seeking to be faithful to their oaths, are by legal means pursuing such evidence. So far the judges have arbitrarily denied any and all such plaintiffs a just hearing in the Courts.

The media has subjected them to ridicule and vilification. They have been slandered as insane and somehow extremist in their views. Yet their only goal is to assure that the expression of sovereign will which is the basis for the legitimate authority of the U.S. government, our Constitution, is not treated with contempt; that the agreement as to the form of government which has been the acknowledged mainstay of the peace and unity of our polity is not cast aside; that Americans loyal to the Constitution and its principles do not face the awful choice of either abandoning liberty for their children and their grandchildren or coming face to face with the grievous prospect of civil war.

Despite unfair and slanderous attacks, people concerned with the eligibility issue have persistently warned that the willingness simply and openly to disregard the Constitution in one instance is likely to lead to further abuses, until in the end it has been shredded beyond recognition or repair.

It’s not hard to recognize the Obama faction’s latest contemptuous disregard for Constitutional procedures as convincing new evidence that their warning is fully justified.

If the legislative power of Congress over the District of Columbia somehow includes the unconstitutional power to assign it a vote in the Congress, what of the other places over which it has similar authority, such as the sites of “Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful buildings.” (Article I, Section 8) or other places (e.g., Guam or Puerto Rico, or the extensive public lands within the boundaries of some of our western States) that qualify as the “Territory or other Property belonging to the United States (Article IV, Section 3).

Can Congress, by factional majority vote, grant voting representation to whatever entities it may by law create out of such jurisdictions?

I realize that any such Congressional actions would fly in the face of our whole history as a nation. I know that epochs in some of its greatest controversies were marked by legislation (the Missouri Compromise, the Great Compromise of 1850) whose history and existence prove that no such power was ever imagined to be in the hands of a factional Congressional majority, until now.

But if the unconstitutional exercise of this power passes with no more than a casual bleat of protest, what warrants the expectation that it will not be used as a precedent for actions that would permit a majority faction to pack the Congress as President Franklin Roosevelt once sought to pack the Supreme Court, engineering permanent and dictatorial control of the legislative power?

I wish we could live in the certain hope that the Supreme Court will weigh in against this patently unconstitutional act. But even if it does, a majority arrogant enough to disregard both the Constitution and the weight of our whole history may well believe that the fervent personality cult they seem to rely on for their impunity in this case will secure them from opposition in any event.

The arrogance of despotic power rarely comes on all at once. By seemingly small usurpations it accustoms people to accept the abuse of power until, encouraged to bolder action, it can eventually be stopped only by major confrontation fraught with the possibility of civil conflict.

Have we and all our leaders become such strangers to commons sense and civic duty that we will only move to act when things have reached such a dire extremity?

Where is the wisdom, where is the prudence, where is the sane concern for civil peace in such inaction? Statesmanship acts from foresight, in good time, by proper and effective political means. But, the American Founders foresaw that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” In that event, people with courage and common sense must make up for the defect of statesmanship.

They must organize and communicate their firm opposition to the politicians who are contemptuously engineering the end of Constitutional government in our land.

If the privileges of statehood are to be granted to the people of the District of Columbia the U.S. Constitution makes it plain that it is for the states to decide, by Constitutional amendment.

The state legislators now promoting the re-invigoration of respect for the 10^th Amendment ought to recognize the Obama faction’s latest act of usurpation as a step intended to subvert their good efforts just as they begin.

I pray they have the vision to see what is at stake and respond accordingly.”

Bottom Line: I truly hope and pray that my concerns are unfounded, but if they are not:

“God Bless Our United States of America”

http://www.greatdanepro.com/Dear%20Jesus/index.htm

“Food For Thought”

  Semper Fi!