Freedom Fighters of America: US Freedom Army

September 24. 2017

By Lewis Shupe

The Roaring Twenties – the end

“What the hell has Hoover got to do with it (his salary being larger than that of the President). Besides, I had a better year than he did.” Babe Ruth 1930

Coolidge had been reluctant to choose Hoover as his successor and on one occasion he remarked that “for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice – all of it bad.” Coolidge had no desire, however, to split the party and did not intervene in the selection of Hoover as the candidate of the Republican Party, a decision that would have unfortunate consequences for the nation and prove Coolidge’s remark to be incredibly accurate.

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) won the 1928 election in a landslide riding the wave of prosperity from the Roaring Twenties. The people were soon to understand that not all Republicans are alike. Hoover was a Republican progressive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt and had supported the “Bull Moose” Party in 1912. The “Progressive Movement” had been declared officially dead in 1924 with the defeat in the 1924 elections of Robert LaFollette, its founder. We all know of course that “Progressive” is just a term that socialists use to hide under and so, after 1924, they started hiding under the term “Liberal” – nonetheless it is all the same and their basic approach never wavers. Hoover was never tagged as a Progressive Republican, even though that was exactly his approach. Hoover was not a conservative and today would be labeled a RINO.

Hoover’s one term was bound up with the Stock Market Crash that occurred shortly after he took office and the subsequent Great Depression that rocked the nation economically. Unwittingly, Hoover’s reaction to these cataclysmic events formed the blueprint for the subsequent actions by the Roosevelt administration that extended and prolonged the misery. When the Depression struck Hoover responded with large scale government intervention, a policy that sealed his doom.

At the outset of the Depression Hoover rejected Treasury Secretary Mellon’s suggested “leave it alone” approach and called many business leaders to Washington to urge them not to lay off workers or cut wages – the beginning of many bad decisions Hoover was to make. Hoover adopted pro-labor policies after the stock market crash that accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation’s gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what should have been a recession to slip into the Great Depression. Hoover raised the top Income Tax Rate from 25% to 63% and made increases in the corporate income tax rate and the estate tax – all policies that as we have seen only make the situation worse. The Federal Reserve was not helpful at all, reducing the nation’s money supply when the opposite remedy was required. One can make a strong argument that this was intentional on the part of the Federal Reserve since the forces of liberalism dominated the Fed and they realized that this was necessary to counteract the success of Conservative Republican policies from the Harding/Coolidge administration.

In the election of 1932 Franklin Roosevelt cynically blasted the Republican incumbent for spending and taxing too much, increasing national debt, blocking trade, and placing millions on the dole of the government. Roosevelt attacked Hoover for “reckless and extravagant” spending and of thinking “that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible.” The Democratic vice-presidential candidate, John Nance Garner, accused Hoover of “leading the country down the path of socialism.” All of these assertions were of course correct. The fact that Roosevelt subsequently did these same things in an even more drastic manner was later conveniently forgotten by anyone associated with his administration.

The charge that Hoover was responsible for the Depression stuck and Hoover suffered a large defeat in the 1932 election. After the election Hoover requested that Roosevelt retain the Gold Standard as the basis of the U.S. currency – Roosevelt refused.

Hoover lived until 1964 and his good works from the period 1933 until his death restored his image in the eyes of many. Hoover was rather the Lazaro Cardenas of the United States – a good man with a flawed vision. His intentions were good but his policies were to begin a period in American history that many people who lived through them were to remember with grief and anguish. The descent into socialism was once again on track and nothing would be able to stop this freight train now that it was moving at a fast clip.

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September 9, 2017

The Affordable Care Act (ACA)

As most of you enlistees in the USFA know, the repeal then replace motto for the ACA is faulty since whatever you replace it with is surely just as unconstitutional as what you just repealed. This now leaves several constitutional options that are available to the government.

----- Amend the Constitution to give the federal government the authority to pass a health care law. This would take a certain amount of time and does not occur to our government since they do not realize they cannot pass any law they so desire.

----- Repeal Obamacare and ask each state to pass their own health care law and block grant money to each state based upon population to support that effort. With this option you would get up to 50 different health care plans and you could see what works and what doesn’t work.

----- Defund Obamacare. The problem with this is that it leaves the law on the books and allows it to be reestablished with funding.

----- The nuclear option. This is the alternative no one talks about. The President could simply say the ACA is unconstitutional and I will not enforce it. In doing this the President would be correct constitutionally but it would necessitate both an explanation of why it is unconstitutional (easy to do if you know your Constitution) and some political courage (very hard to do).

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The block grant option above (number two) is the one I personally favor. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act featured block grants to states and was extremely successful when passed and implemented (Barack Obama has since gutted many of its features through Executive Orders).

It would also be a wonderful first step in taking control of healthcare away from the federal government and beginning the process of dismantling the federal government leviathan. It is clear from the U.S. Constitution that the federal government has no authority to control healthcare. Taking control of healthcare away from the federal government is a crushing blow to socialism since federal control of healthcare is a number one priority of all socialists. The decentralization of power required by the U.S. Constitution, when implemented, means the end of the stranglehold the socialists have on the U.S. government.

If you want to read more about some of the methods required to install the block grant strategy you may go to our web site and read the post entitled “The Federal Extortion Racket”.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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August 23, 2017

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, US Freedom Army

The Roaring Twenties

“I have no trouble with my enemies but my damn friends, they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.” Warren G. Harding

“How can they tell?” Dorothy Parker upon being informed that Calvin Coolidge had died.

In 1920 the Republican from Ohio Warren G. Harding (1865-1923) was elected on the promise of a “return to normalcy.” After the whirlwind eight years of Woodrow Wilson apparently the nation was ready for his conservative, affable and “make no enemies” campaign. One of the reasons for his smashing electoral victory was his effective use of the new media, radio. Harding was at best a mediocre president who did little but he would sign laws put forth by the Republican controlled Congress and that made his term in office reasonably successful in reversing some of the actions of the Wilson administration.

Harding’s legacy was determined primarily by the people he appointed to positions of trust – the choices were either outstanding or horrible. Harding made some great choices including Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary and, most importantly, Calvin Coolidge as Vice-President. Coolidge was famous for his actions as Governor of Massachusetts in the Boston police strike and people were ready for someone with a no nonsense approach to problems. On the other side of the equation Harding appointed many of his political cronies to key positions and these people kept the Harding administration scandal filled. His worst appointments were Harry Daugherty, his campaign manager, as Attorney General and Albert Fall as Interior Secretary. The Justice Department was a constant source of scandal and Albert Fall was subsequently sent to prison for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal. There was no evidence that Harding was ever personally involved in anything improper but his political cronies, the “Ohio Gang”, made his administration a misery.

Harding assumed office while the nation was in the midst of a postwar economic decline, referred to as the Depression of 1920-21. Harding’s Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, ordered a study that demonstrated as income tax rates were increased, money was driven underground or abroad (USFA note: see “The Laffer Curve”) and concluded that lower rates would increase tax revenues. Tax rates were reduced annually in four stages from 1921 to 1925 and revenues to the treasury increased substantially and unemployment also continued to fall. The combined declines in unemployment and inflation were among the sharpest in U.S. history. Wages, profits, and productivity all made substantial gains during the 1920s ushering in the period known as the Roaring Twenties.

On August 2, 1923 Harding died somewhat unexpectedly from a somewhat mysterious heart ailment. His death made his Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), the 30^th President of the United States. While most of the nuts and bolts legislation revising the Wilson presidency came from Congress, Harding was at least an enthusiastic cheerleader and supporter for the changes and did sign the bills. This mini-reversal of the descent into socialism was continued and supported by his successor.

Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor’s administration and left office as an extremely popular president. Coolidge, elected in his own right in 1924, gained a reputation as a small-government conservative and a person who embodied the slogan “That government is best which governs least.” Coolidge was also known as a man who said very little in private but very much in public, holding 520 press conferences during his administration (that is about one every four days for you math majors).

Coolidge disdained regulation and proved it by appointing commissioners to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission who did little to restrict the activities of businesses under their jurisdiction. The regulatory state under Coolidge was “thin to the point of invisibility.” While Coolidge supported many measures as Governor of Massachusetts he did not support these measures as President because he correctly realized that these measures were, under the United States Constitution, the function of state and local governments. Due to the reductions in Income Tax passed during the period 1921-1929, the federal debt was substantially reduced. Coolidge opposed the McNary-Haugen farm bill saying that agriculture must stand “on an independent business basis” and declaring it as unsound and likely to cause inflation (people actually worried about inflation once upon a time in America).

1921-1929 was the only time from 1901-2017 that the descent into socialism was somewhat reversed. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that these were the only two presidential terms when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress during this entire eight-year period and there was a Republican President. This situation has never occurred again since that time. If the nation had retained such conservative leadership for eight more years the Great Depression would probably have not occurred and the socialist policies inaugurated by subsequent administrations would have been greatly muted. Alas, it was not to be. A good trivia question is: “Who was the last Conservative President whose party controlled both houses of Congress during his entire term in office?” The answer is Calvin Coolidge.

The Harding/Coolidge era showed what can be done when government reduces taxes, balances the budget, lowers regulations, and generally stops meddling in the private sector. The economy boomed, the deficits disappeared, the national debt was greatly reduced and almost paid off and people enjoyed a level of prosperity not seen in America for many years. The Roaring Twenties were a tribute to Conservative and Constitutional government.

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Coolidge was eligible to run for reelection in 1928 but chose not to do so. This would prove to be a decision that would have disastrous effects for America since his successor, Herbert Hoover, proved himself to be what we would call today a RINO (not a Conservative) and acted in ways that caused the stock market crash to turn into a depression. We will talk more about Hoover in another post and why his decisions proved disastrous for the nation and subsequently for the Republican Party.

A few Coolidge quotes are in order here:

“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.”

“Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

“Civilization and profit go hand in hand.”

“If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called upon to repeat it.”

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July 20, 2017

The Supremacy Clause is one of the most misunderstood parts of the U.S. Constitution and is constantly misinterpreted by many people who should know better. The Supremacy Clause is contained in Article VI Clause 2 of the Constitution and reads “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” The Supremacy Clause in effect says that Federal law rules supreme over State law and in general from that standpoint it is consistent and makes perfect sense.

The problem occurs when the Federal Government passes a law that is unconstitutional (which they do with regularity) and then attempts to use the Supremacy Clause to enforce the law. This justification for this set of circumstances just will not pass the smell test but stinking up the place constitutionally is something the Federal Government has mastered.

A second problem occurs when a Treaty is passed that has provisions that violate our Constitution. A Treaty does not take precedence over our Constitution but some people would have you think that it does. So, for example, the U.S. cannot conclude a Treaty that takes away your rights under Amendment II. That portion of such a Treaty would be void.

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Article III Section 3 of the United States Constitution reads, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” We have a long history of the liberal media adhering to and giving aid and comfort to our enemies. All the way back to the Vietnam War and probably further. The Sedition Act of 1918 forbade Americans to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government, flag, or armed forces during war. This act was repealed on December 13, 1920 but sedition has always been a crime. The last known attempt to prosecute someone for sedition was in 1959 when John W. Powell published inaccurate information about the U.S. government while working in Korea.

The media has enjoyed complete freedom from prosecution for sedition in part because of two unbelievable court rulings that could only have been decided by judges who had been drinking too much Socialist Kool-Aid. In N.Y. Times (notice how this name keeps cropping up) v. Sullivan 1964 the judge essentially said that “to ensure that debate on public issues remains uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” it is just fine and dandy to lie. So you can just go ahead and lie as long as you say the lie is uninhibited, robust, and wide-open. In St. Avant v. Thompson 1968 the judge asserted that “to ensure the ascertainment and publication of the truth about public affairs, it is essential that the First Amendment protect some erroneous publications as well as true ones.” If I am reading this one correctly, I think that it says whenever you lie in print it’s acceptable as long as you say you were trying to ascertain the truth. The courts have given the media a free pass to lie and when they print sedition they only have to say “I know, but I was just trying to ascertain the truth and besides it was really a robust and uninhibited form of sedition.”

Sedition, like treason, has no statute of limitations.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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July 4, 2017

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, FFOA News Network

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Sedition, like treason, has no statute of limitations.

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June 18, 2017

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, FFOA News Network

The Department of Education is a microcosm of what is wrong with government. The Department of Education was authorized by the Socialist controlled U.S. Congress in 1979 and signed into law by the Socialist President Jimmy Carter over the vehement objections of the Republican Party, which argued it was just another government “make work” bureaucratic entity (which is exactly what it is). In 2017 this department has about 5,000 employees and a budget of about $100 billion dollars. Its functions kept expanding because of executive orders and the infamous “No Child Left Behind” Act of 2001, signed by President George W. Bush (Bush the second). “No Child Left Behind” would have been better titled “Almost Every Child Left Behind” or even better “No Government Employee Left Behind”. Under the Department of Education, we have all types of government-speak entities created by “No Child Left Behind” including: Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools” (they’re doing a great job); Office of Innovation and Improvement (whatever that means); Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services; Office of English Language Acquisition (where do we acquire this); etc.; etc.; etc. Then we have the government-speak entities created by executive order including: White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities staff; White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities Staff; White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans; etc.; etc.; etc. We also have an Office of Legislation & Congressional Affairs whose primary task, we are sure, is to be certain that Congress does not find out what is taking place in Education so that all those great government jobs will remain in place. They also have an Office for Civil Rights (gee, we thought the Justice Department did this) and all the other internal functions that any red-blooded bureaucratic department requires. They even have an International Affairs office for some reason that no one can determine.

The Education Department really only does three main things: they administer student loans and grants (more about this later); they ship money to the states (assuming they have behaved); and they drive state and local educators crazy with blizzards of paperwork so the Education Department can justify its existence (this, of course, requires local school boards to hire more bureaucrats to process all the paperwork so they can get their federal funds).

Our favorite part of the Education Department is the “Institute of Education Sciences.” This is, in actuality, a sort of “think tank” whose charter is to “provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy.” As far as we can determine, despite their theories and statistics, in over fifteen years they have never produced one single concept which has helped improve student learning. Oh wait, we forgot, they may have thought of Common Core. When you ask these people what they are doing you always get some government doublespeak. It seems they just have too much “rigorous evidence” to manage. Nonsense like this makes Orwell look like a beginner.

They tried to have a Department of Education briefly in the 1800s but they realized it was unnecessary so they just made it into an office with a few employees. People were smarter then.

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Claiborne Pell (1918-2009) was a six-term Senator from Rhode Island. He was a courtly gentleman with fine manners, although he seemed a little quirky. When you asked him what was his proudest achievement he said “Pell Grants.” In spite of his polished exterior, inside beat the heart of a fanatical liberal socialist.

Claiborne Pell was the heir to the Lorillard Tobacco fortune and he married Nuala O’Donnell, the heir to the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Fortune. Together they may have been the wealthiest couple in Rhode Island history. Claiborne had a lot of money and not much to do so he got himself elected as a Senator from Rhode Island. Now if Claiborne had wanted to hand out money to needy children to go to college he could have used his own money – he had plenty of it – and set up a Pell Grant fund of his own. Fanatical socialists don’t want to use their money, however; they want to use yours and they want to do it on a grand scale.

Claiborne got the Socialist Party in Congress together and they produced and passed Pell Grants which give money to college students based upon need. In 2017 the amount of Pell Grant money given to college students will be about $20 billion with a maximum per year per student of about $6,000. This means that, in effect, every person in the United States is contributing about $75.00 per year for free educations. There are some working families of four that might like to have that $300 per year. Be advised that there are no criteria other than need.

You can tell a socialist program because it is essentially a redistribution of wealth from which you have no opportunity to recover. If you are taxed to pay for a road you have an opportunity to use the road so you have recovery. If you are taxed for Social Security you have an opportunity to recover because if you live long enough you will get a return. But if you are taxed so that your money can be handed to someone else who provides you with no services, you cannot recover. This is the essence of liberal socialism and it is destroying America. It can come in many forms other than taxation, but the result is always the same.

Rhode Islanders should be ashamed of themselves.

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Socialist President Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965. It expires periodically but is always renewed. From the HEA sprung the Perkins Loan Program for very low-income families and the Federal Stafford Loan Program which is also based upon need and is the primary student loan guarantee program in the United States. Between Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and Perkins Loans, all based upon need, you have a basis for one of the Education Department’s three main functions.

There is no regulation on who is qualified to be in college and who is not; if the “need” is there that is all that matters. In 2017, some universities send recruiters to low income neighborhoods trying to locate people to go to college so the universities can keep the federal money coming in and stay afloat. Many of these “recruits” have low SAT scores and a poor academic record and no possibility of ever having a meaningful university experience, so they drift to majors like “Bakery Science” or “Puppet Arts” where you have no potential to learn any job skills but are useful to the university to keep students in school for four years so the cash keeps flowing.

Why did we decide to guarantee student loans and give grants to students based solely upon need? Shouldn’t they have some potential as shown by grade point average, test scores, student achievement, or some other objective criteria which show a pattern of success? Maybe they could all become lawyers: we need another ten million of them. Your socialist dollars in action.

There is a ton of private money out there for young people with ability and need, but socialism must march on. The Stafford Loan default rate in 2017 is currently about 10 percent per year. That doesn’t sound like much but you must remember there is a ten-year payback available on these unsecured loans. The government is losing a ton of money on people who in many cases have no business being in college.

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The Department of Education must be eliminated. Not only is federal control of education unconstitutional but the one size fits all mentality of the federal government is failing here in a monumental way.

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June 11, 2017

A few comments about water. Just my opinion but here goes.

“Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting over.” Mark Twain

Presently the United States and Canada have the greatest storehouse of unused fresh water in the world in the Great Lakes. The surface area of the Great Lakes is larger than the state of Utah (the 13^th largest state in terms of surface area). It would require about 650 Lake Meads (the largest man-made lake in the United States), filled to capacity, to fill the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes have, in terms of surface area, five of the nine largest lakes in the world. Superior (#2); Huron (#4); Michigan (#5); Erie (#8); Ontario (#9). Enough said!

Using Lake Superior we could run a water line from Duluth, MN to Grand Junction, CO (950 miles as the crow flies) and pour water into the Colorado River. We could also tap into that line and feed it into the Colorado via the Green River if necessary. We could fill all the reservoirs on the Colorado River an additional eighty feet and the water level of the Great Lakes would drop less than six inches.

In Alaska, the people have built a pipeline to transport oil for consumption 800 miles long over some of the most difficult terrain in the world. We built power grids and lines all over the country to provide power. In the Nineteenth Century we built railroads crossing the continent. We have built a roadway system across the continent that is the envy of every nation on earth. We can build a comprehensive national water management system so droughts, as occurred in Georgia and Texas recently, can be managed. The linchpin of this process is the Great Lakes.

The Chinese recently launched an 800 mile pipeline project to bring water from the South (where there is a lot of water) to the North (where there is not a lot of water). The Southwestern United States will soon lose its ability to add population since there will be no water available for growth and the action probably taken in the short run will be to close the Imperial Valley farms.

The Duluth to Grand Junction alternative I mentioned above is only a suggested beginning. This nation needs a comprehensive water management system so that the effects of drought and flooding can be minimized. The cost for this will be massively offset by making land currently unavailable for farming available for growing food.

As a side note: The United States and Canada need to merge and combine their resources. The resulting mega-country would be the largest area wise in the history of mankind and would result in the most prosperous and self-sufficient powerhouse ever seen on this planet.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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June 4, 2017

The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the continent of Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. Zimbabwe is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east.

Zimbabwe received independence in 1980 and Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory, assuming power as the head of government. This, for Zimbabwe, was the beginning of the end as this North Korean trained socialist began initiating policies that would ultimately destroy the most prosperous nation in Africa.

Before the year 2000 the economy of Zimbabwe was healthy and produced a surplus. This was primarily due to mineral exports and an agricultural output that produced a surplus and a net gain. Zimbabwe was once known as the bread basket of Africa. The Zimbabwe economy declined 5 percent in 2000, 8 percent in 2001, 12 percent in 2002 and 18 percent in 2003. The downward spiral of the economy has been attributed mainly to mismanagement, the corruption of the Mugabe regime, and the eviction of more than 4,000 white farmers in the controversial land redistribution of 2000 (there go those socialists again, redistributing wealth).

Inflation rose from 32 percent in 1998 to 150,000 percent in 2007. The money of Zimbabwe is worthless and hyperinflation has turned Zimbabwe into a barter nation. Robert Mugabe is still alive at age 93 and running Zimbabwe, or what is left of it. If ever a case could be made for term limits this is it.

At present a high percentage of the population is afflicted with AIDS and a country which formerly had a surplus of food now has 80 percent of the population considered as malnourished. 95 percent of the formerly productive land lies barren and unused. Ninety percent of the remaining population has no work. The Ndebele people, the second most populous ethnic group, have almost all returned to their South African Zulu roots, but, at the present time, a return to South Africa is no picnic either.

This is what socialism does – it destroys societies. It takes wealth away from productive people and gives it to unproductive people who squander the wealth. The net result is that only a few elites in the power structure have anything, everyone else is poor. No starker example of this can be seen than the difference between North and South Korea. The effects of Socialism vs. Capitalism are clearly displayed in the comparison between these two formerly united countries. It is a tragic contrast but available for viewing to anyone who cares to look. This is not rocket science – go visit both countries and look around (if you dare).

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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May 23, 2017

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor FFOA News Network

Article V & the Convention of States

Article V of the United States Constitution reads as follows:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

As far as we can determine there are two ways to amend the Constitution:

Way 1 – Two thirds of both houses of Congress must agree to an amendment and then three fourths of the state legislatures must approve the amendment.

Way 2 – Two thirds of the state legislatures may call for a Constitutional Convention (Convention of States) to propose amendments, which then must be ratified by three fourths of the state legislatures.

There are five problems with this Article, three minor and two major. Let us deal with the minor ones first:

Minor problem 1: Way 2 may well never happen. By the time everyone quits arguing about the specifics of a Constitutional Convention it will be a long time before it can proceed. We had a Constitutional Convention initially because we needed a Constitution but we have never had one since and likely never will.

Minor Problem 2: How state legislatures approve amendments is not subject to judicial review. Probably, in most cases, there is nothing wrong here. If a state has a say three quarter requirement to approve this is probably excessive. The Article needed to be more specific in this regard.

Minor Problem 3: The Article does not confer any emergency powers so that an amendment may be adopted until acted upon by the states. This action could be necessary under certain conditions.

Major Problem 1: The 3/4 rule is too stringent.

Major Problem 2: The Article, as written, gives the states the power to stall. Like college basketball, the states need a shot clock. Often the Congress, in proposing an Amendment, gives the states a time limit. The Congress has no constitutional authority to do this and the states are free to ignore the time limit, which they often do. The Founding Fathers did not include a time limit because people in that time were generally honorable and when presented with a question would act upon it. The framers of the Constitution did not foresee all the weasels that are presently elected to state and national offices that are afraid to stand up and be counted on an issue because they may offend some group of voters.

Why is this so important? Presently it is almost impossible to amend the Constitution. This gives the government another excuse for ignoring it. We see what has happened over the last 85 years when Congress and the President ignore the Constitution and the courts allow this to take place – a legal impetus to the rise of socialism.

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The Convention of States is an effort by a group of concerned citizens to call for a Constitutional Convention to amend the Constitution. While the U.S. Freedom Army supports and applauds their efforts we feel that the task is quite daunting and the required 34 states needed to call for such a convention will be extremely difficult to attain. Having said all of that we hope they succeed.

If they do succeed they should concentrate on Article V only and not make any other constitutional changes. Without going into a lot of detail the items we noted above should be addressed and the 3/4 requirement should be changed to 2/3. It should be constructed so that 2/3 of the state legislatures can amend the Constitution unilaterally. Without going into a lot of detail about the nuts and bolts of how this should be done, this is necessary as a check on the overreach of the federal government.

This new Amendment would look something like this:

Section 1. Article V. of the Constitution of the United States of America is repealed.

Section 2. The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution. The Legislatures of two thirds of the several states must ratify those Amendments for them to become law.

Section 3. Any State may propose an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when approved by 2/3 of its legislators. These Amendments shall be valid as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of two thirds of the several states. Individual states will have one year to ratify or refuse to ratify Amendments as proposed to them. Failure to act one year from the date of submission will mean that the state has approved the Amendment.

Section 4. Any Amendment may be enacted immediately and be in force until the ratification process is complete if the President of the United States and at least seven members of the United States Supreme Court agree to the Amendment as proposed. No Amendment under this section may nullify the powers of the states listed in this Amendment.

Section 5. The Legislatures of the individual states must only be in the majority to ratify Amendments. Other than this requirement, individual states may select any other reasonable processes for ratification.

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May 13, 2017

Some comments on gold.

An ideal currency “should be absolutely invariable in value.” Precious metals are not perfect but they are “the best with which we are acquainted.” David Ricardo

Gold fits almost perfectly all the criteria required for an item to be used as money. It is instructive to give a list of the requirements for an item to be a good candidate to be used as money:

Durability – It must be able to stand the wear and tear to which money is subjected without degrading over time.

Portability – It must have a high amount of worth relative to its size. In April 2017, a one ounce American Gold Eagle carried in one’s pocket is about the size of a silver dollar and is worth about $1,250.

Divisibility and consistency – It must be able to be broken into smaller parts and still retain the same value. A ¼ ounce gold coin is exactly one-fourth of the value of a one ounce coin. A diamond, for example, when split into four parts will not retain the same value as the original stone. The purity and weight of gold can be precisely measured.

Intrinsic value – It must have some worth in and of itself. Gold is used in various ways and has a value above and beyond its value as money.

Scarcity – The world stocks of gold have consistently risen about 1.5% per year on average with very little fluctuation, giving it an edge over silver in this respect. Silver stocks have shown a somewhat greater tendency to fluctuate.

Difficulty of counterfeiting – Since gold is a basic item, number 79 on the periodic table, it has yet to be duplicated by any technique known to man. Also, its authenticity can be easily discerned through various tests.

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Executive Order 6102. In one of the most blatant acts of any president, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard and forbid citizens to own gold except in small quantities. Article I Section 8 of the United States Constitution gives Congress the power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standards of Weights and Measures;” - by this act alone FDR had committed an impeachable offense and it is clear that he had no constitutional authority whatsoever to write such an order. The standard of measure for money was gold and FDR outdid himself in this brazen display. The reason given for this act was the deflation the country was suffering under. That deflation was caused by the actions of the Federal Reserve, however, not the gold standard. The real reason for this action was to begin the process of removing the last vestiges of control from the money supply so Roosevelt could have unlimited funds to increase government spending. This and subsequent monetary acts would have devastating long term effects for the integrity of the dollar.

The gold standard, while not perfect, is substantially better than using fiat money which enables central governments to spend recklessly with no restraints. This is why the Founding Fathers insisted on a currency backed up by a precious metal, namely gold or silver.

The price of gold has not moved much in the last five years. This is because people are under the illusion that there is no inflation. This illusion is fostered by the phony statistics coming from the federal government. While the inflation we are having is small (about 6 percent per year) it will begin to grow exponentially if nothing is done about the national debt and government spending.

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JUST MY OPINION. My personal opinion is that gold is extremely cheap and if you are in a position to own some get it. It should make up about 20% of your net worth. Get physical gold if at all possible and find a safe way to store it. When people realize that we are having an inflation gold’s value could double or triple quickly. Gold is money but unlike paper money it retains its purchasing power.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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May 6, 2017

Patriotism and Globalism

“The divide is no longer between the right and the left but between the patriots and the globalists.” Marine Le Pen – candidate for Premier of France.

What do the forces of socialism want? They want a world government based upon socialist principles. This is their fundamental goal and, in order to achieve that goal, they must bring down the United States of America and eliminate the U.S. Constitution since both these bulwarks of freedom stand in their way. The way they have chosen to do this is to build up the welfare state until the nation’s economy collapses, paving the way for their takeover of the instruments of government.

This strategy was first enunciated by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the founders of Fabian Socialism. This strategy was augmented by the work of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci and by the further work of Cloward and Piven. Fabian Socialism believes in gradualism and the slow methodical approach rather than by violent overthrow. Some famous members of the Fabian Society were the economist John Maynard Keynes and the playwright George Bernard Shaw. The Fabians founded the London School of Economics.

Socialism succeeds in attracting followers because of clever marketing. It sounds good: we will all work together, we will all share, we will raise up the poor and downtrodden. The fact that socialism has a dismal past, has always failed to deliver on its promises, and always leads to a dictatorship does not seem to occur to some people until it is too late. Socialism is a little like the old-style antifreeze – it may taste sweet but if you drink it you get a bad result.

If the United States were to fall under the spell of socialism not only would the socialists have eliminated their primary opposition but they would inherit a military that would allow them to succeed on a world-wide scale. This cannot be allowed to happen. The patriots must get organized and become prepared to eliminate the globalists from public life so that freedom and the U.S. Constitution can take back America.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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April 17, 2017

Just a few short reminders about the U.S. Constitution

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“A law that is repugnant to the Constitution is void.” John Marshall, Chief Justice United States Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison 1803

“[S]hould Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government, such [acts are] not the law of the land.” John Marshall, Chief Justice United States Supreme Court, McCulloch v. Maryland 1819

The power of the federal government is limited. It can only act in those areas that are assigned to it and only within the limitations of those assigned areas. The powers assigned to the federal government are (with a few exceptions) outlined in Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution (the Enumerated Powers) and anything falling outside those powers are designated by Amendment X for disposition. The Congress cannot pass any law they so desire and any law they may pass that exceeds the enumerated powers is void.

The federal government may not pass a health care law. This means that the federal government has certain limited choices if they wish to have a health care law. Amend the Constitution to give the federal government authority over health care or ask the individual states to pass their own health care laws and block grant money to the states to support that

endeavor. Repeal (constitutional) then replace (unconstitutional) does not pass the smell test.

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From James Madison:

“With respect to the two words “general Welfare” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former taken for granted.” (Translation: If you have not been given the power to do something, you cannot use “general Welfare” as a justification for doing it. This is not the intention of these words.)

From Thomas Jefferson:

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.”

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

“The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.”

“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

The Welfare Clause is the most abused part of the United States Constitution. The forces of socialism claim it gives them the authority to pass any type of law they want to help people; this claim is false. They then cite certain Supreme Court rulings to buttress their claim; those rulings were invalid since the courts may not contradict the Constitution.

The people who wrote our founding documents were consistent in their writings about the Welfare Clause. They said you could not use the Welfare Clause as an excuse to exceed the Enumerated Powers of the Constitution. The destruction of the meaning of the Welfare Clause (coupled with the destruction of the meaning of the Commerce Clause) was the key to the destruction of the concept of limited government and the subsequent rise of socialism.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

U.S. Freedom Army

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April 5, 2017

If you wish to listen to the podcast of my interview on Americanuck Radio you may use the link below. It is on February 18, 2017, Hour 2, and takes about 50 minutes. After using the link then click on the arrow on the left and then download.

http://www.americanuckradio.com/podcast/2017/2/19/mihaela-brooks-trump-trudeau-body-language-isis-in-calgary-lewis-shupe-us-freedom-army-consitutional-principles-and-more

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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln

During the interview noted above the interviewer asked me a question about how the United States would do in a war with Russia (or words to that effect). This took me aback since I was not prepared to go there and I had not looked at the global power rankings for quite some time and couldn’t remember exactly what the numbers were. Suffice it to say that the United States has 40%-50% of the world’s military power. The United States spends more each year on its military than all the other nations of the world combined. The United States could take on all the other countries of the world combined and have a good chance of winning.

I also said that Canada and North Korea were very close in military capability but did not get the numbers exactly right. For those of you interested in this sort of thing you can go to www.globalfirepower.com and either look at all the countries or compare two countries. Some of the things in there are quite interesting.

In the 2^nd Iraq War the United States fought against the Iraqi Army. Iraq was considered to have the 9^th strongest military in the world at that time and they were easily beaten using less than 10% of the military capability of the United States.

The United States military provides stability in the world and if it did not exist the world would descend into a chaotic state. If Russia knew we would not interfere they would occupy Belarus, the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia just for starters. China would grab Taiwan and whatever else they could seize and a great deal of the freedom of many nations would be lost.

The destruction of America will not come from a foreign government. It will come from the forces of Marxism that are working inside America to destroy our way of life. Those forces must be removed from public life. These are “the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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March 26, 2017

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, FFOA News Network

On October 24, 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence upon ratification by the five permanent members of the Security Council – France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States – and by a majority of the other forty-six signatories. The United Nations was founded as a successor to the League of Nations, which was considered to have been ineffective in its role as an international governing body since it had been unable to prevent World War II. That was the ostensible reason, but the primary reason was that the United States had never supported the League of Nations and was not a member and therefore the League of Nations was a toothless tiger. Apparently in the 1920s the people elected to run the United States government were a lot smarter than they were in 1945.

The United States initially enjoyed a certain amount of control since the initial fifty-one members usually sided with the United States but that all changed beginning in the mid fifties when new members began being added rapidly until the number of members grew to 185 member-states by 1995. Coupling that with the dubious Uniting for Peace resolution (whereby a veto in the Security Council would mean the General Assembly would assume the powers of the Security Council) meant that the United States had absolutely no control over any U.N. actions even though it was paying on average over the years about 30 percent of the total cost of the operation.

The net result of all these actions is that the United Nations is nothing more than another third world country. It is a place for various kinds and types of satraps from numerous elitist controlled dictatorships to come and rest and collect a big salary for doing little or nothing. Furthermore, these countries pay almost nothing to have a forum to rant about the United States, Israel, or any other successful country that makes their tin-horn fourteenth century dictatorships seem paltry by comparison. The fact that the United Nations keeps its budget shrouded in secrecy further complicates any meaningful analysis of how money is spent. The largesse of the United States and certain other western world countries is the only reason it continues to exist financially.

Personnel costs are estimated to consume at least 75 percent of the U.N. operating budget and the number of employees has increased from 1,500 to in excess of 100,000 worldwide. The salary and benefits packages of U.N. employees in New York City are incredibly lucrative. The average U.N. employee makes about twice as much as is paid for an equivalent position in New York City itself. The United States is supporting another welfare program not documented as such.

The U.N. is what it has always been for the last fifty years – a rotting carcass which has been propped up by various socialist run governments (including often the United States) and left-wing dictatorships and displayed as a vibrant living being. It is time for the final denouement and it can come none too soon.

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If the U.N. wants to survive in the 21^st Century it must come to grips with the realities of geopolitics in the present world and try to solve world problems rather than pressing for the globalist agenda favored by so many. To do this it must reorganize itself.

The USFA offers the following suggestion:

#1 Break the world into 9 regions: A. United States & Canada; B. Central & South America: C. Russia; D. China; E. Sub-Saharan Africa; F. Europe; G. Mediterranea; H. Sub Asian Continent; I. Oceania.

#2 Give each region exactly one vote and 9 votes are required before the U.N may act. Each region contributes 1/9^th of the total amount required to operate the U.N.

It is helpful to have a forum where world problems may be discussed but in its present format the U.N. cannot be allowed to continue to exist and attempt to impose its socialist agenda upon the entire planet. Barring some sort of makeover the U.N. must be scuttled.

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Drain the Swamp

March 12, 2017

It took about 85 years to build the swamp and, as America is finding out, it will not be drained in 85 days and almost certainly not in 850 days either. My contacts in Washington D.C. tell me that the entire Executive Branch of government is almost completely operated and controlled by Socialist Party operatives and without them the entire apparatus of government would cease to function. These people need to be phased out slowly and replaced by responsible patriots who care about America, but that will take a long time. This at least can be done slowly and methodically and has a long-term chance of success. This, however, is not the biggest problem in the swamp.

As we are seeing, the Socialist Party is trying to use their functionaries in the Judicial Branch of government to usurp the constitutional duties of the Executive Branch. If Judge Gorsuch is confirmed as the next Supreme Court Justice (which he should be) what will you have in that Court? You will have four socialist judges who always vote in lockstep (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor) and three conservatives (Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch). You will also have two justices (Roberts and Kennedy) who are unpredictable and apparently have no judicial philosophy whatsoever (see John Roberts and the Affordable Care Act). The notion that with the appointment of Gorsuch you will now have a conservative Supreme Court is simply not substantiated. Judge Kennedy is considering retirement so if you can replace him with a conservative and replace one of the socialist judges (Ginsburg has been sleeping through some sessions) with a conservative judge then perhaps some good things will happen in the Supreme Court.

It is now obvious that the entire federal court system is riddled with socialist judges who are only interested in their socialist agenda and could care less what the Constitution says. There is a big opportunity here since many of the positions in the Federal Courts are unfilled and they should be filled as quickly as possible by the new administration.

We all know about the liberal media and their lies and I will not go into detail on that matter here. Suffice it to say that the forces of socialism are petrified that all their hard work of 85 years is about to be undone and they are reacting violently to everything. The continuous promulgation of lies will work on some people who, after much repetition, will begin to believe the lies. Combine this with the Senate filibusters, the protestors (who is paying these people?), the Federal Reserve (which since 1913 has been controlled by socialists) and the many illegal acts of the socialists and their stooges and you can see why it will not be so easy to drain the swamp.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

U.S. Freedom Army

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February 28, 2017

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." Attributed to Alexander Tytler, explaining what had destroyed the Athenian Republic more than 2,000 years before.

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government.” James Madison

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A few examples before we get into the heart of the problem:

On May 10, 1940 Winston Churchill was named Prime Minister of Great Britain following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. Winston Churchill was the one person primarily responsible for saving Great Britain from being taken over by Nazi Germany and was rightly regarded as the savior of the British people. What was his reward? When he ran for reelection in 1945 the British people voted him out and, in a landslide victory, elected Clement Attlee, a Fabian Socialist who proceeded to nationalize large parts of the British economy. The British voters in effect said: “We won the war and suffered, now it’s time for some free stuff.”

As a condition for getting another bailout in 2012 the Greek people agreed to certain austerity measures imposed by their conservative government that were necessary to avoid a default and the certain destruction of their economy. The austerity measures caused most of the citizens some pain and so at the next opportunity they voted the conservatives out and voted in a socialist government. The socialist government removed all the austerity measures and the economy of Greece came within a week of collapsing because of having no money in their banks. Fortunately for the people of Greece another bailout was hastily restructured (the European Central Bank (ECB) is run by socialists and they hate to see socialism fail) in 2015 and the inevitable was delayed again. It looks like some time in the next year or so another bailout will be required. How long before the ECB stops rewarding bad behavior?

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People always want problems solved but they want to experience no pain personally. If they experience pain they will vote out the people who gave them the pain and replace them with people who tell them what they want to hear.

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At some point in time, and hopefully soon, America’s national debt will need to be addressed. If it is not addressed the subsequent rampant inflation will eventually cause massive pain. If it is addressed the pain will come from entitlement programs that will need to be cut or eliminated. Either way there will be pain. The wild drunken spending of the last 25 years (plus) will eventually come home to roost. Either way there will be pain and the people identified as causing the pain will be tossed out and the people who promise to return to the wild spending spree will be put back in power.

The problem is completely traceable to our present voting system which, as it is structured, is a recipe for disaster. This is the same voting system that has been copied by many free countries around the world and is sowing the seeds of disaster worldwide. So long as the people who take from the society have as much to say about who runs the society as the people who contribute to the society you will get trouble. In the early days of America you had to be the head of the household and a landowner to vote – not everyone could vote. While I do not advocate going back to that system some other system that gives the power to responsible citizens needs to be implemented. Voting should be an earned privilege and not a right.

As it stands right now the socialists have the voting system exactly the way they want it and they are holding all the cards in this respect. This does not bode well for the long term future of America.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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The United Nations, Agenda 21, and Socialism

February 16, 2017

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, FFOA News Network

The United Nations has evolved into a bureaucratic mess whose main goal is to work toward a world government (which they want to control) and to try to find clever ways to get money from America and use the U.S. Armed Forces to help them achieve their ends. When the United States veto in the Security Council was diluted beginning in the 1950s the United States should have left the U.N. immediately. There are numerous small nations that are members of the U.N. and pay no money into their budget (the USA currently pays about 22%) and have almost as much power as the USA. Without a complete restructuring of the U.N. to properly reflect the realities of world geopolitics the United States should exit immediately and help countries directly as the need arises without using the U.N.

During the administration of Barack Obama, the U.N. gained a large foothold in the United States and attempted to install something called Agenda 21. In this they almost succeeded. A Hillary Clinton victory in 2016 would have brought the U.N to your doorstep.

The 6 Agenda 21 points of emphasis are:

1. Global Warming/Climate Change

2. Fear of over population

3. Goal to Destroy the Free Market system

4. Cheap Energy is the enemy of the Earth

5. Common Core Indoctrination

6. Government Healthcare

Agenda 21 is nothing more than an orchestrated attack on the free market system using Marxist principles to achieve the goals of socialism. It uses manufactured crises to intimidate people and to achieve control over their lives so they can be manipulated into thinking that free markets are the cause of all these problems and will accept the thinking that a world government is the only solution to these problems. Agenda 21 is Marxism in action.

Communism and socialism share the same goals and only differ as to tactics. Communists want to overthrow a government by violent means while socialists want to overthrow a government by infiltration. In free societies, a communist revolution is extremely difficult so the socialist method has been adopted to break down free market countries. The primary goal of all socialists is a world government built upon socialist principles. The fact that socialist systems always fail and always lead to dictatorship does not occur to those committed to the cause since they always believe the next time socialism will work. Socialism’s goal in a free market system is to build up the welfare state until the nation’s economy collapses and then rush in to seize control and install their socialist agenda.

You know you are hearing a socialist when he continuously (but often cleverly) plays on these themes: centralization of power; class warfare; redistribution of wealth; the evils of the free market. When you confront a socialist and tell him what he is you will hear a denial and then he will hide under another name – liberal; statist, progressive; (or whatever) – and say he is only trying to help people and make America better. In spite of what they may say, these people do not care one whit about anyone else – their goal is to achieve power and topple the capitalist system. They hate capitalism and want to see it eliminated.

A socialist world government would ultimately turn the entire world into North Korea – everyone except the people in power would be starving. A very small percentage of the American public that is militant, well-funded, politically active and committed to their cause is working hard to see that Americans lose their freedom and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

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February 4. 2017

“The last 30 years we have lived off the future, and the bill is coming due.” Tom Coburn, former Senator from Oklahoma

In November of 2016 my car battery died so I called AAA. They came to my home and replaced my battery and charged me $149. I decided to look up the old invoice from several years prior to see how much they had charged me the last time this happened and it was done in January of 2011 and the cost was $113. In actuality, these numbers are a reasonably good reflection of the inflation rate for the last 6 years.

This is called inflation folks! The exact same service was $36 dollars more than it was about 6 years prior. Do not let anyone, and particularly the federal government, tell you that prices are not going up. At present the rate of inflation is running at about 6% per year and, if nothing is done, this will only get worse. This is a major consequence of the national, state and local debt that is crushing this nation (see www.usdebtclock.org).

People on fixed incomes who rely almost solely on Social Security or other fixed retirement benefits are being slowly but systematically starved to death because their cost-of-living increases are not being accurately reflected in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS – or, more accurately, BS). Ask yourself, for every $113 you were receiving in 2011 are you receiving $149 now? If the answer is yes you are extremely fortunate.

The repayment of the debt and the interest on that debt is a major problem in and of itself but the greater problem is the printing of money by the Federal Reserve to buy the debt that no one is purchasing. If nothing is done soon this problem will become irreversible and the value of money will be destroyed. The question I often ask people is what will you do when money is worthless? In my wallet I carry a Zimbabwe $100 trillion bill to remind me of where this nation is headed.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, through a series of Executive Orders (does this sound familiar), took the nation off the gold standard in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution (see Article I, Section 8, Part 4 of the U.S. Constitution; and see our www.usfreedomarmy.com post “To coin Money”), and instituted fiat money as the standard for America this was the beginning of the end for freedom. Your children and grandchildren will pay a terrible price for the drunken spending spree this country has been on for the last 84 years. If the U.S. Constitution were being followed scrupulously during that period many of the nation’s problems would not be with us today.

This is one primary reason the U.S. Freedom Army exists. Unless these financial problems are attacked directly and solved soon the nation will continue its financial spiral downward and the results of that spiral will be the greatest economic catastrophe in world history.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

U.S. Freedom Army

************

January 22, 2017

The Federal Government has developed an interesting method that they use to make the States obey them. They extort the States with money. In other words, they develop some sort of federal program (usually unconstitutional) that they want the States to adopt and then say that if the States adopt the program they will give them money to support it but if they do not adopt the program they will get no money. These are usually things like school lunch programs, Common Core, the Affordable Care Act or whatever other social program the Federal Government wishes to impose upon the States. The Federal Government also uses money to bail out failing States that support their political agenda and help create the illusion that these States are not having any financial problems.

The Founding Fathers never envisioned how the Federal Government would become such a massive money collection apparatus and never foresaw that it would use this apparatus to impose its will upon the States and abort the constitutional provisions for limited government. The ability to control State operations through this apparatus has given rise to the massive federal government operation we see today that seeks to control all aspects of life in America. If we are ever to return to a limited federal government this constitutional oversight must be addressed.

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Ideally, we would want a Constitutional Amendment that would address this situation. That Amendment should have the following provisions:

--- The Federal Government may not send any Federal Funds to any governmental entity below the State level.

--- The Federal Government may only send money to the States in the form of a block grant with no spending restrictions attached. The States may spend the money block granted to them in any manner they so desire.

--- The Federal Government may not send money to the States as loans, may not buy their bonds, or send money in any other form other than the block grants mentioned above.

--- When the Federal Government remits money to any State they must send an equivalent amount of money to all the other States in like kind based upon population.

--- The only exceptions to these rules occur when a State has a natural disaster, in which case separate federal legislation may apply.

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So, for example, if California has 40 million people and Wyoming has ½ million people and the federal government sends California $40 million they must also send Wyoming $500,000 and every other State an equivalent amount based upon their population. The federal government may say that this money is for education (or anything else) but the State may spend it on anything they wish. This is in effect like a rebate program and if the States feel that the Federal Government is being too stingy they now have certain recourses more readily available.

Lewis Shupe

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January 13, 2017

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite.” James Madison, Federalist Papers #45

The United States Constitution is a limiting document. It gives the federal government vast powers in foreign affairs but very limited powers in domestic affairs. This was done for a reason, to the greatest extent possible to protect the people from tyranny. Or, as the Founding Fathers put it, we just got rid of one King and we do not want another.

The correct procedure when the federal government wishes to assume a power it has not been given by the Constitution is for a Constitutional Amendment that allows the federal government to assume that power. Since the Amendment process was made very difficult (for a reason) by the authors of the Constitution this process is never followed. The federal government simply and illegally takes over the power and no one even attempts to stop them. This has led to the gigantic leviathan known as the federal government that wants to control all aspects of your life and that will ultimately eliminate your freedom. It is almost a certainty that well over 95% of the people in America believe that the federal government can pass any type of law they may desire and that that law overrules State law – this is simply not true.

I will give you below a short list of some things the federal government does that are unconstitutional and are therefore illegal. Some of these things are not necessarily bad and perhaps it would be best if the federal government continue doing some of them but the fact remains that they have never received the proper constitutional authority to do them. This is only a short list so you may get the flavor of it, it is not all encompassing.

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*** Almost all the functions of the Department of Education including (but not limited to) Student Loans, Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, Perkins Loans, the “No Child Left Behind” Act, etc., etc., etc.

*** Almost all of the functions of the Department of Health and Human Services including (but not limited to) Medicare, the Affordable Care Act (unconstitutional in spite of what the Supreme Court said), etc., etc.

*** Almost all of the functions of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal government has almost no authority here whatsoever. The federal government has no authority to loan people money to buy houses and urban development is a function of the State involved.

*** The federal minimum wage is unconstitutional.

*** The Federal Aviation Administration.

*** The Wilderness Act of 1964.

*** Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

*** The National Labor Relations Board.

I have given you just a few examples to highlight the enormity of this problem. Suffice it to say that any business that operated like the federal government would quickly go bankrupt.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

U.S. Freedom Army

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December 23, 2016

Just my opinion but here goes …

Barring some sort of extraordinarily unusual fraud at the Electoral College, on Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the next President of the United States. The departure of Barack Obama can come none too soon for me personally and for millions of other Americans. President Obama still has a little time left to pardon some felons, award the Medal of Freedom to his pals in Hollywood (he forgot Jane Fonda – so far) and illegally get as many Middle Eastern refugees into the country as he can accommodate but the best two words to describe his departure will be “good riddance.” Whether the nation can survive the damage wreaked upon it by Barack Obama and his Marxist cohorts remains to be seen.

What is so frightening is that approximately ½ of the nation voted for Barack Obama twice and Hillary Clinton once. This says to me that ½ of the people prefer a country run under the principles of the Communist Manifesto rather than the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Freedom Army still seems to have quite a lot of work to accomplish and particularly regarding education since it seems that our socialist universities and socialist media operatives are succeeding in the mind control that they employ so effectively.

Donald Trump has said some things that I agree with wholeheartedly (and some I disagree with) but rest assured his task will not be easy in any area. The left-wing media, his enemies in Congress (of which there are many) and the courts (of which there are many) will use everything at their disposal to thwart him and will make his life a misery for his entire presidency if he attempts to do anything at all they dislike. His current attempts to cooperate with his own party and members of the opposition will only be successful if he does exactly what they want and nothing less. Once he tries to do what he wants to do they will turn on him as they did with George W. Bush.

Redirect your anger. Black Lives Matter does not care about black lives. La Raza does not care about Latinos and Latino immigration. NOW does not care about women. These and other similar organizations are all front organizations for the forces of socialism and they are bought and paid for by the forces that want to see America changed into a socialist country. These organizations exist to foment anger and class envy and to make America appear to be an unfair society that persecutes the downtrodden. Redirect your anger to the people in America who want to see our freedom destroyed and replaced by a new (and consistently failed) system that rewards failure and punishes success.

Obamacare. I am willing to bet some money that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will never be repealed. I hope I am wrong about that but we shall see. The ACA is the crown jewel of socialism. Centralized control of healthcare is the number one priority of socialism and they will fight tooth and nail to save it. In the beginning they will filibuster in the Senate and then if that fails they will try other tactics but the end game is to get it “modified.” This will leave the law in place so when the socialists are back in power they can change it to the single payer system they so desire. The ACA is unconstitutional – period! All President Trump needs to say is that the law is unconstitutional and he will not enforce it but he probably does not have the political courage to take that step. I find this “Repeal then Replace” mantra laughable since whatever you replace it with is almost certainly also going to be unconstitutional. The only way for the federal government to have a health care law is to amend the Constitution.

Illegal Immigration. We think President Trump will do some good work here even if he does nothing else than enforce the laws that are on the books. I have a few suggestions to help him along. Harboring an illegal alien is a felony punishable by (I think) 5 to 10 years in prison. Round up a few of these sanctuary city mayors and prosecute them and all that will stop. Find a way to get a law passed that one must be a citizen for at least five years before one can vote. Require a government issued photo-id and a social security card before one can vote. The social security card can ultimately be tied in to the social security system and a lot of fraud can be prevented (for example, social security usually knows who is alive and who is dead).

Jobs and tariffs. This is a tricky one. No matter what people may think, many of these manufacturing jobs are lost. Americans will not work for $2.00 per hour (or so) and other people around the world are prepared to do so. The only thing that tariffs will accomplish is to raise prices in America for many of these manufactured goods. When Americans are prepared to work for $5.00 per hour (or so) then these jobs will return but the $30.00 per hour that some Americans were receiving for manufacturing work will in many cases no longer be available. Tariffs are dangerous because other countries will then counter with tariffs of their own and make our products unsalable. If you recall the secession of the Southern States and the subsequent Civil War was initially caused by the Southern States reaction to tariffs on foreign manufactured goods (see our website post “The United States Civil War” for more details).

The three branches. The victory election night now gives the Republicans control of two branches of government. People forget about the Courts. The court systems are riddled with Socialists, Marxist, Progressives and Communists of various ilks who do not give a darn about what the U.S. Constitution says and they are appointed for life. These people make up 20% to 40% of the members of our courts yet socialists are less than 5% of the U.S. adult population. This is why Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option, so he could load the courts up with his people as much as possible before the disaster struck. These people have a goal and it is not to interpret the law, it is to destroy the Free Market System (Capitalism) and the American way of life. In this respect they are succeeding on a massive scale. The Supreme Court is just the tip of the iceberg and major changes need to be made here to save the Republic from the socialists in the legal profession.

Debt and inflation. The Federal Reserve will continue to print money because otherwise the government will shut down. The Socialists will fight tooth and nail for every government program and unless the Republican Party suddenly grows a spine nothing will be done. Ultimately the subsequent inflation and unfunded debt, if left unaddressed, will destroy the U.S. economy. Look for a national debt of approximately $20 trillion when BHO leaves office.

The trap. I write about this after every election and I have seen this so many times in my lifetime it is now comical. The Socialist (Democrat) Party loses. They then say they are ready to cooperate. Cooperating with the Socialists means doing exactly what they want. The Socialists then ask for the exact same things they wanted before and if the opposition party doesn’t give it to them they claim the opposition is being uncooperative. The Main Stream Media ably assists them in this farce. Do not go to Washington D.C. and expect the opposition to cooperate with you and particularly do not sacrifice your principles for cooperation. Saul Alinsky: “Accuse your opponent of what you are doing yourself.”

Dear President-elect Trump. The liberal media will now publicize and want you to solve every problem they have hidden from the public under the BHO administration. The Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to damage the economy and make you look bad. Every attempt will be made to blame you for the massive economic and social problems created by the previous administration. Gird your loins and get ready for the onslaught.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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December 3, 2016

This is the time of the year when the Nobel Prizes are awarded. Since the socialists took control of the Nobel Prize committee there have been some horrendous blunders made in the awarding of these prizes. These blunders usually occur in the awarding of the Prizes for Peace and Economics but occasionally occur in other fields of interest. I will document some of the most incredible below.

In 1994 Yasir Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Yasir Arafat was a terrorist. He ordered the bombings of Israel and sent suicide bombers into Israeli cities for the purpose of killing innocent civilians. The award was primarily given because he entered into a peace treaty with Israel that seemed to indicate that Palestinian demands were finally over. Of course nothing could have been further from the truth. Arafat simply was an opportunist whose only goal was the destruction of Israel. In that regard he at least had some historical justification for his actions, since the Palestinians felt that their land had been stolen from them by the Zionists after the conclusion of World War II. Arafat signed the peace treaty because he got some concessions he desired – he knew he could, like Hitler, find a pretext later for breaking the treaty and then demanding more concessions. The continuous smirk which was a constant feature of Arafat’s face was even more evident at the ceremony as he took the money and ran. It was my understanding that in 2010 the committee considered giving the Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden for his body of work in helping to punish the “Great Satan” but they couldn’t find him to determine if he was still alive and therefore eligible.

In 2007 Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on alerting the world to the dangers of global warming. In his documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” (more correctly called “A Convenient Lie”), he ginned up all kinds of moral outrage from his socialist friends and began, with the help of the liberal media, to scare the hell out of people under the age of twenty-five who began to believe that they were going to be destroyed in an inferno before their fiftieth birthdays. By falsely portraying normal actions of the planet as somehow being caused by global warming he encouraged the myth that carbon emissions into the air were causing massive weather changes. Strangely enough, assuming everything Mr. Gore said to be true, no one ever had a substantive solution to the problem other than going back to living in caves or seeking out solutions which were impractical with current scientific knowledge (wind power being a typical example). For some strange reason, when the planet was proven not to be getting warmer, the “Global Warming” crowd became the “Climate Change” crowd with all the usual inane arguments about controlling carbon emissions. Al Gore and his crowd were the worst thing that ever happened to this planet, because they distracted attention away from immediate short-term problems being caused by human activity that had solutions available if only time, attention, and funding had been directed in a proper way.

In 2008 Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his treatise called “Neo-Keynesian Economics.” “Neo-Keynesian Economics” is an analysis of trade patterns and location on economic activity. What trade patterns and location have to do with Keynes is unclear at this point, but so long as you have the name Keynes in the title the Nobel committee will guarantee the prize. If Mr. Krugman had titled his treatise “Neo-Hayek Economics” I can assure you the Nobel Committee would have assigned his work to the dustbin of history, the New York Times would have canned him, and Princeton University would have revoked his tenure and he would be teaching at a junior college in Peoria, Illinois (if he was lucky). Mr. Krugman’s work starts with the assumption that all nations are Socialist States, should become Socialist States, or have a desire to become Socialist States. With that assumption one can prove great numbers of interesting things, such as it is economically efficient to build an airplane by building the pieces in several different countries so that various governments can share in the activity. One has only to look at samples of his political writings in the New York Times to ascertain what a muddleheaded thinker he is.

The award for the worst Nobel Prize goes to Barack Obama who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. What were they thinking? Maybe a massive cold spell in Scandinavia froze everyone’s brain. Some members of the committee have recently asked him to give the prize back. Too late – he has your money and the stuff. Perhaps if Hillary Clinton is elected she could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Hillary may not be able to give her acceptance speech, however, since she may be incarcerated.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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November 11, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

“It depends on how you define “alone” … there were a lot of times we were alone, but I never really thought we were.” Bill Clinton’s Grand Jury testimony

William Jefferson Clinton, the 42^nd President (1993-2001), would have ranked in the top tier of all time socialist presidents and massively accelerated the descent into socialism except he had a major problem. After his first two years in office, the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the remainder of his presidency and blunted his efforts to move the nation toward the left (you thought we were going to talk about something else, didn’t you!). That doesn’t mean that Bill Clinton didn’t do any damage, he did plenty of damage and particularly so in his first two years in office. Clinton, along with his wife and able co-conspirator Hillary, attempted to foist upon the American people a massive centrally controlled health care plan and that contributed mightily to the shellacking the Democrats took in the congressional elections of 1994, the first time in forty years that the Republicans controlled Congress. After 1994 Clinton pretended to be a centrist, which he was not.

It is not within the scope of this post to delve into the many personal problems of Bill Clinton – his draft dodging, sexual liaisons and various shady dealings while involved in Arkansas politics. Bill Clinton, like most people who rise to high office, was a very brilliant person and was a Rhodes Scholar. Clinton had a penchant for prevarication but was so intelligent he could seemingly remember who he had told what lies to – now that’s brilliant.

Upon taking office Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which required large employers to allow employees to take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. In his first address to the nation Clinton announced his plan to raise taxes to cap the budget deficit. Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (who comes up with these names) that cut taxes for fifteen million low-income families and raised taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers (redistribution of wealth). He expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low-income workers. Clinton bears more responsibility than any other single individual for the housing collapse in 2008. By instituting executive orders effective in January, 1995 he constructed the conditions that fomented the problem (see our previous post “Anatomy of a Disaster”). Clinton’s socialist thinking was instrumental in one of the largest financial collapses in American history. The Clintons were the driving force behind the legislation forming the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the Adoption and Safe Families Act and the Foster Care Independence Act, all large government programs (SCHIP being the largest health care reform passed in the years of the Clinton Presidency).

One example of Bill Clinton in action should give you a clear view of why he had richly earned the nickname “Slick Willy.” Once in power in Congress in January, 1995 the Republicans passed the Welfare Reform Act. The welfare laws put in place by the Democrats had constructed a matching funds system whereby each dollar of state money spent on welfare was matched by a dollar of federal money. This system encouraged states to expand the welfare rolls since the more people they put on welfare, the more federal money they would receive. The huge numbers of people on welfare and the expanding welfare rolls were becoming a financial burden. The new law block granted fixed amounts of money to each state for welfare. Under the new law states could keep whatever of that amount they did not spend, thus encouraging states to get people off the welfare rolls. The new law was a disaster for the socialists for several reasons. First, it gave incentives to reduce the welfare rolls, something socialists want to see expanded. Second, it took control away from Washington and gave control to the states, reversing centralized political power, a fundamental requirement of socialism. Third, and most importantly, if successful it constructed a model whereby other federal functions could be returned to the states, a disaster in the eyes of socialists. On two occasions, in late 1995 and early 1996, the Welfare Reform Act was passed and sent to Clinton. He vetoed it both times. Then the Republicans decided to wait until September 1996 while Clinton was in a heated reelection campaign and sent him the bill again. Afraid that another veto could cost him the election, Clinton signed the bill, claiming (falsely) that it now had the correct provisions that he wanted. Within a year it was obvious the bill was working and by March 1999 the number of people on welfare had been cut in half. Once it was obvious that the bill was working, Clinton tried to claim credit for it saying that he had “ended welfare as we know it.” How do we know that signing the Welfare Reform Act was a political ploy by Clinton to help him get reelected? In early 2009 shortly after being elected Barack Obama modified the Welfare Reform Act that had worked so well and then continuously modified it even further to attempt to return the country to the old system. Bill Clinton offered not a single complaint – not a peep out of him.

Beginning in 1998 impeachment proceedings were begun against President Clinton thereby making him only the second President ever to be impeached (Andrew Johnson). They had Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice, probably the same things they had Nixon on but the liberal media in this case rushed to his defense. The impeachment was a dumb move by the Republican Party. From a practical standpoint, they knew they did not have the votes to convict. The precedent it set, however, will be longer lasting since now they can pry into a President’s personal business and try to get the goods on him. They should have let the Starr report just sit there and hang over Clinton’s head. The Republicans got an “F” on their report card for this action.

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October 24, 2016

THIS IS ABOUT THE ELECTION AND THE USFA POSITION ON THE ELECTION. PLEASE READ IT!

“I have vowed I will never vote for a Democrat again. No matter who they are. I don’t care if God becomes a Democrat. These Democrats are Communists. This is gangsterism. This is crazy.” Howard Stern

“There is no longer any reason for me to run as a candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.” Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket. 1944.

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Many of you have seen me use these quotes before but they bear repeating. I am not a big fan of Howard Stern and I realize that Norman Thomas is dead but when I see something that I feel is right on the money I use it.

The U.S. Freedom Army has repeatedly said it will not endorse any political candidates. We will now “unendorse” quite a few, however. In the few paragraphs that follow we will try to summarize our thinking on this matter.

A.B.C. = ANYBODY BUT CLINTON. Hillary Clinton will be a continuation of the disaster for America. HRC is a hard core Marxist who believes in the theories of Karl Marx and the tactics of Saul Alinsky. She will complete the destruction of America that has been so carefully crafted by Barack Obama and his closet financial supporters. Whether America can be saved or is too far gone is difficult to determine at this point in time but the election of Hillary Clinton will guarantee its ultimate demise. Globalists like BHO and HRC want to see a socialist world order and the destruction of America is the key to fulfilling their dreams. Clinton is straight out of the Fabian Socialism school of thought and believes in the gradualism of that theory. It is time to send her out of politics forever so that she can go home and hopefully not be heard from again. We are not against endorsing a woman for President – just not this one. Barack Obama was the first President who hates America and Hillary Clinton would become the second.

NEVER VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT UNLESS THERE IS NO OTHER REASONABLE OPTION. There are many fine people who are members of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party sometimes runs excellent candidates for office. The problem is that if you elect a Democrat, no matter how qualified or responsible, they always come under the sway of the extreme left wing of that party and the extreme left wing of that party now controls that party. That means that if a new electee of the Democratic Party does not do it the way the power structure wants they will ensure he is not reelected and they will be out in the next election. If a Democrat is elected and wishes to stay in office he must perforce become a socialist or his political career is over. The Democrats carefully select people who will toe the party line, even if it means scraping the bottom of the barrel (this goes for their judicial appointments also). The Republican Party is now very similar to the Democratic Party of about fifty years ago. I don’t understand why reasonable Democrats don’t now join the Republican Party but I suppose old habits die hard.

The future of a free America is at a tipping point. It is unclear if anyone can save it but it is a certainty that the Democratic Party cannot and probably does not even want to do so. The long term effects of 85 years of gradual socialism and socialist control of the media is now upon us.

Vote your conscience but PLEASE SHOW UP AND VOTE and please, if at all possible, help out at the polls. America needs you to participate.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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October 10, 2016

The situation in Venezuela is dire. The Main Stream Media is covering up the reality of what is taking place since they know it will be exposed as another failure of socialism. As I may have told you before, socialism always evolves into a dictatorship since it is the only way it can maintain itself. President Maduro is a clone of Hugo Chavez and is not the brightest bulb on the planet, causing him to create such things as a Ministry of Happiness.

There is almost no medicine, food shortages are rampant causing people to go into Colombia and raid villages, and mass starvation will soon ensue. The fundamental problem is a 500% rate of inflation. A 500% rate of inflation means that something that cost $10 on January 1, 2016 will cost $5,000 on December 31, 2016. There is absolutely no way people can get those kinds of pay raises to keep up with those kinds of cost increases and this is especially true when most businesses are failing causing most people to be put out of work.

The most important function of any government is to protect you but its second most important function is financial integrity. When you have governments going on wild spending sprees and creating massive debt you know that inflation is soon to follow since the integrity of the currency will soon be shattered. In spite of the reports from the government on the Consumer Price Index (doctored by the government to give a false picture) we have inflation here but it is not so great that it is yet noticeable by many people. If the wild government spending is not soon stopped people will soon begin to notice the price increases.

Venezuela is a blueprint for what will happen in the United States and many other nations around the world if nations do not get their financial houses in order and stop bailing out failing governments. Venezuela actually has certain short-term advantages that the United States will not enjoy if the United States continues to follow this path. Venezuela can be bailed out and can use other currencies. The United States is too big to be bailed out or use other currencies.

When people tell you that the debt is okay because we only owe it to ourselves do not listen to this nonsense. Venezuela has shown you how this debt will be paid and it is not a pretty picture that they are showing us. This is why other countries have reduced or stopped buying our debt instruments and the Federal Reserve has to print more and more fiat money to keep our government from defaulting.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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This is a short discussion about common sense, something that has clearly been lacking in the federal government for an extremely long time.

When I was a student at Stanford University (before the forces of liberalism took it over) I took an introductory course – the equivalent of Economics 101. During the first week the instructor showed (in U.S. dollars) a five-year graph of the cost per ton of sugar in Cuba and the cost per sixteen ounces of silver in Canada (I use these two arbitrarily since I do not remember the exact items he was comparing). Over the five-year period in question these costs matched almost exactly. The instructor said “one could therefore conclude that there is a correlation between the cost of these two items but common sense tells you there is none – it is merely a coincidence. Sugar does not affect silver and vice-versa.” Whenever someone tells you he has developed a correlation or relationship one should cast a wary eye.

The federal government spends about two hundred billion (yeah, that’s billion) dollars yearly on research and development projects with very little federal management or control. That is a heap of money being passed out to individuals who have little or no oversight and who only have to concoct some flimsy justification for what they are doing. This usually includes the requisite number of research assistants, statisticians, clerks, and other functionaries required to present a “thorough and complete analysis.” There is at least one criterion important for receiving research money namely you have to be able, without saying so directly, to demonstrate that you are a loyal socialist. This is fairly easy for most university professors.

Once you receive a grant the hard part begins – you must figure out a way to get the grant renewed. You let your assistants do all the research work while you concentrate on how to keep the money rolling in. The tried and true way to keep the money rolling is to “find something.” More specifically a relationship or correlation which intrigues people even though it probably has no basis in common sense. (I warned you to be wary!) So you get stuff like “two glasses of red wine per night makes you live longer” or “eating spinach reduces carpal tunnel syndrome” or whatever other coincidental correlation you can get publicized and get the public to buy into. But at least you “found something” so next year you get more money to “find something else.”

Have you ever seen these television documentaries where the scientists get all excited about something that doesn’t seem very exciting? They want to act like they are doing something profound so they can convince the government to give them some more money next year. The scientific community has evolved into a bunch of hucksters that are ready to sell their integrity for the right price. The few objective scientists that are still operating are shouted down by their liberal colleagues and are left out in the wilderness. Any scientific conclusion one wishes to reach is now available for the right price.

This is one reason this nation is in dire financial straits – we continue to spend the people’s money on garbage.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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September 14, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

In 1920, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded. The founders of the ACLU read like a Who’s Who of American Communism. Roger Baldwin (pictured) was the primary founder, but he had numerous associates of his same ilk. Baldwin, who headed the ACLU for many years, was a pacifist who joined the International Workers of the World in the 1920s. He conveniently renounced his Communist affiliations about the time of the 1939 German/Russian Non-Aggression (except against Poland) Pact.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was another founder who was the first woman to head the American Communist Party. Radicalized at a young age, she was so notorious she was actually kicked out of the ACLU by Roger Baldwin. After a nine-month trial in 1952 she was convicted under the Smith Act of conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the United States government. She died on 9/5/64 on a trip to the Soviet Union and was honored in the Soviet Union in 1964 with a state funeral in Red Square.

The list of founders with major collectivist tendencies include: Eugene V. Debs (founded the Socialist Party of America); John Dewey (radical philosopher and a liberal darling for his Socialist writings); Norman Thomas (six-time Socialist Party candidate for President); Upton Sinclair (author who advocated Socialist communes); Crystal Eastman; Clarence Darrow; Jane Addams; Walter Nelles; etc.

The ACLU was, always has been, and remains a front for the American Communist Party. Its charter is to use the First Amendment to break down the fabric of freedom and help destroy American values. That is why the ACLU is generally uninterested in any part of the Constitution other than the First Amendment. President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be a Supreme Court justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a long-time attorney for the ACLU. Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing – and what does this tell you about the political philosophy of William Jefferson Clinton?

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On January 10, 1963 Congressman Albert S. Herlong, Jr., D-Fla, read a list of 45 Communist goals into the Congressional record. I will list below some of the 45 Communist goals read by Congressman Herlong. Test yourself and see how many of the Communist goals listed are being implemented by the ACLU today in order to destroy America (Note: there is only one correct answer to this test).

16) Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17) Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for Socialism, and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks. (USFA note: In 1944 Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party in the United States, stated that the ACLU functioned as “a transmission belt” for the Communist Party).

23) Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24) Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and press.

25) Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.

26) Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”

27) Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a religious crutch.

28) Eliminate prayer or any phrase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

32) Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

(USFA note: Bold Print is ours).

40) Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

Test yourself again and see how many of the goals listed above are being utilized by Socialist members of Congress to destroy America’s culture and traditions and to push us gradually to a Socialist dictatorship. (Note: Once again, there is only one correct answer to this test and it is the same answer as the one above.)

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September 2, 2016

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government.” James Madison, the Father of the Constitution and the author of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In nature you will observe that often creatures prefer to steal from other creatures rather than do the work themselves because it is so much easier. So when a cheetah races after and kills an antelope and a few hyenas see that occur the hyenas will go over and take the kill away from the cheetah. The cheetah did all the work but the hyenas end up with dinner.

It is the same way with people also. It is much easier to take something from someone else than to work for it yourself. That is why in organized society we have rules against this sort of behavior and why there are penalties involved for people that engage in it. If you go to someone with a gun and take their wallet the end often is that you (the perpetrator) will end up with a bad result. The fact remains, however, that there are still people who prefer to take from others rather than work for it themselves and if they can find a clever way to do that they will proceed.

So the question then becomes how does one get someone else’s wallet and do it legally. The answer becomes to use the government to take someone else’s wallet and then hand it to you. So if you go up to someone with a gun and demand their wallet you go to jail but if the government goes up to someone with a gun (figuratively) or a law (literally) and demands their wallet and then hands it to you it is all perfectly legal. The liberals have a fine sounding name for this and it is called “Social Justice.” What social justice is, in actuality, is a legalized form of theft

It is necessary for everyone to become acutely aware of what words are being used to describe a product because often those words are extremely inaccurate and do not represent reality. (See for example: Affordable Care Act).

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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Anatomy of a Disaster

August 25, 2016

In 1948, for the sixth consecutive and final time, Norman Thomas ran for President of the United States on the ticket of the Socialist Party. The socialists ran another candidate in the next two presidential elections but after receiving less than 3,000 votes nationwide in the 1956 election the Socialist Party disappeared. The party of Eugene V. Debs was gone. Where did the members go?

The 1956 elections made it obvious to the socialists that the American people do not like socialism and that the party could never make progress by calling themselves what they really were. From its founding in 1901 until its disappearance in 1956 it became more and more obvious to the socialists that to succeed in America they had to follow the principles of Fabian Socialism and go undercover. As more and more socialists began the process of hiding they hid under various names (populist, progressive, liberal, yellow-dog Democrat, etc.) but generally gravitated toward the left wing of the Democratic Party. During this transformation they were able to assist in the process of centralizing power while pretending to be doing it only to help others or to react to a “crisis.”

Socialists are true believers that hate capitalism and free market systems. Like all true believers they require a cause to give their lives meaning and when the cause is identified they are willing to die for it. They are willing to die because without the cause their life has no meaning. This makes them extremely committed to the cause and dangerous to anyone who stands in their way. It is because of their intensity that they have been so successful – this intensity is unmatched by people who love freedom and the American way of life – and because of this fervor we have seen less than five percent of the American adult population almost succeed in aborting the U.S. Constitution and turning this country into a socialist dictatorship. This maniacal devotion to installing a failed system is something I leave to psychiatrists to evaluate and explain.

To increase and expand their power the socialists have hijacked various parts of American society. It is nothing more than the old communist re-education camps but with a new twist – they are now updated with modern new names and made to appear legitimate. The old mechanisms still apply, however: Lies; distortions; rewriting history; the end justifies the means; destroying religion and morals; well, we all know the rest. These are the same tactics that construct a compliant populace so the socialists can maintain their power once they have achieved it.

The Democratic Party debates between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders I found to be interesting in one respect. These debates essentially consisted of two socialists arguing about who could give away the most free stuff to the citizenry and was therefore the best candidate for the American people. Bernie had a leg up on Hillary since he admitted that he was a socialist while Hillary continues to pretend she is not one.

The mechanisms of Fabian Socialism are quite evident in everyday America to anyone who takes the time to look. Centralize power and build up the welfare state until the nation’s economy collapses and then use that as an excuse to seize control. If Hillary Clinton is elected President you are assured that these mechanisms will continue to be expanded upon and utilized for the ultimate control of the American people. This would in short order signal the end of your freedom.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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August 18, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

IF YOU WISH TO SEE THE KINDS OF THINGS THAT HAPPEN WHEN THE CLINTONS ARE IN THE WHITE HOUSE PLEASE READ THIS.

In 1947 the Housing and Home Finance Agency was established under the watch of President Harry S. Truman. This was the beginning of the disaster. Housing is not a function of the federal government (see Tenth Amendment) and Home Finance is not a function of the federal government (look under “Bank” in the dictionary). The seed had been planted but it would take sixty years for the tsunami to appear.

In 1949 President Harry S. Truman signed the Housing Act of 1949 which was passed by the Congress to help eradicate slums and promote redevelopment. Eradicating slums and promoting redevelopment are not functions of the federal government (see Tenth Amendment) and thus this act was illegal. Not a single state or local government agency had the courage to challenge this act in court and the cavalcade of illegal acts would continue to follow.

In 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Housing Act of 1959 allowing funds for elderly housing. When you’ve done something illegal once, the next time it is easy.

In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson creates HUD as a cabinet level agency by signing the Department of Housing and Urban Development Act. We now have a cabinet level department created to administer and control illegal acts of the federal government.

In 1968 the (illegal) government mortgage-related agency Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is converted from a federal government entity to a stand-alone government sponsored enterprise (GSE) which purchases and securities mortgages to facilitate liquidity in the primary mortgage market. The move takes the debt of Fannie Mae off the books of the government. There are at least two illegal acts here.

In 1969 the Brooke Amendment (named after the RINO Senator from Massachusetts, Edward Brooke) establishes that low-income families only pay no more than 25 percent of their income for rent. Another small step in the march to socialism because you know who pays the other 75 percent (or whatever is left) – you the taxpayer.

In 1970 the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) is created by the Congress as a GSE to buy mortgages on the secondary market, pool them, and sell them as mortgage-backed securities to investors on the open market. Now we have two illegal enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In 1974 the Equal Credit Opportunity Act imposes heavy sanctions for financial institutions found guilty of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age. This is the only legal act in this entire sordid affair, and it was the only act that was necessary. All the previous housing acts of the federal government were not only illegal but also unnecessary. This one act covers all the bases. Socialists cannot stop there, however, since the process of redistributing wealth must be completely institutionalized.

In 1974 the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 allows community development block grants and help for urban housing. Let the federal government coercion begin. You, the states, act in a certain way, and we’ll ship you some money – otherwise we will not.

In 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This illegal act and the illegal GSEs were the machinery used to eventually destroy the United States housing market. This act was justified by the Socialists (and some RINOs) to stop the process of “redlining.” The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, properly enforced, had already accomplished that task, however. What it actually did was to give the federal government power to coerce banks to loan money to unqualified applicants with specific penalties for those financial institutions that did not comply. The CRA also offered up the GSEs as support for this activity. This act was laxly enforced until 1993, when Socialist President Bill Clinton took the reins.

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When a good Socialist sees an opportunity to redistribute the wealth, he usually acts expeditiously. In 1993, after forty-six years of illegal acts, the establishment of illegal government corporations, and the creation of an illegal cabinet department, the machinery was set for the biggest Socialist redistribution of wealth in United States history. In early 1993, shortly after taking office, President Bill Clinton ordered new regulations for the CRA that would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities. On January 31, 1995, another “date which will live in infamy,” the new rules went into effect.

The new rules required strictly numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating: using federal home loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to a specified neighborhood, income group, or race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to target groups to collect a fee from the banks. The new rules substantially increased the number of risky mortgages. Related rule changes gave the GSEs extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5 percent of capital to back their investments, vs. 10 percent for banks.

Banks were forced to set up CRA departments, a CRA consultant industry was created and new financial-services firms “helped” banks invest in packaged portfolios of CRA loans to ensure compliance. Established and new community groups began marketing such mortgages. The Senate Banking Committee estimated that as a result of CRA in 2000, these groups nationwide had received 9.5 billion (yeah, that’s billions) in services and salaries. As of that time such groups also had received tens of billions (yeah, that’s billions) of dollars in multi-year commitments from banks including ACORN Housing $760 million; Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America $3 billion; a New Jersey Citizen Action coalition $13 billion; etc, etc. The number of CRA mortgage loans increased by 39 percent between 1993 and 1998, while other loans increased by only 17 percent.

Bill Clinton was somewhat fortunate in two respects. He got this all done just as the Republicans were taking control of the House and Senate in 1995, and the Republicans were not paying attention. Note: some Republicans are Socialists, too. Even if they had been paying attention, they didn’t have enough votes to overcome a veto, so perhaps they looked elsewhere to make progress.

God could have sent us more White House interns in Clinton’s first term and possibly spared us this disaster. Perhaps this is proof that God does not meddle in the affairs of man.

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By 2000 Socialist President Bill Clinton had a raging forest fire started, but no one wanted to put it out. In 2001 the U.S. Federal Reserve, under Chairman Alan Greenspan, lowered the federal funds rate 11 times, from 6.5 percent to 1.75 percent. The justification for this action was to get us out of a recession. We had a new Federal Reserve policy – the way to put out a fire is to throw gasoline on it.

In 2002 President George W. Bush set a goal of increasing minority home owners by at least 5.5 million by 2010 through billions of dollars in tax credits, subsidies, and a Fannie Mae commitment of $440 billion (yeah, that’s billions) to establish Neighbor Works America with faith-based organizations. We need more gasoline to get this fire out.

In 2003 the Bush Administration recommended what the New York Times (does this look familiar) called “the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.” Socialist representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, soon to become head of the House Banking Committee claimed of the two GSEs-“These two entities … are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we see in terms of affordable housing.” For the first and only time (until it was too late) the Bush Administration tried to act on this crisis (USFA Note: When you see liberals use the term “affordable” rest assured that some type of redistribution of wealth is on the way).

In 2004 HUD ratcheted up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac affordable housing goals for the next four years from 50 percent to 56 percent. From 2004 to 2006 the GSEs purchased $434 billion (yeah, that’s billions) in securities backed by subprime loans (for subprime loans substitute the terms “junk bonds” or “worthless garbage”). Liberal doses of gasoline required to extinguish the fire.

By 2007, the GSEs owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market. When the lid blew off this problem starting in early 2007, almost every major country in the world was affected. Suddenly no one wanted to buy “worthless garbage” – what a surprise.

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The three biggest villains in the 2008 housing crisis in order of importance:

President Bill Clinton: He unleashed this nightmare on the planet and then, in 2008 when the results came in, acted as if he had no culpability.

President George W. Bush: He perpetuated the nightmare and, except for a few token efforts at reform, allowed it to fester until the infection set in. He then followed that up with the wrong remedy in 2008.

The Federal Reserve: Went in lockstep with both administrations and provided the key interest rate reductions that magnified the problem.

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US Freedom Army

August 10, 2016

A large headline in my daily newspaper read: Man hit by car at bus stop sues. Without going into a lot of detail 4 years ago this man was sitting in a bus stop shelter and a drunken driver jumped the curb and hit him and he lost his leg. A terrible tragedy but this is something that is entirely the fault of the drunken driver. Now, 4 years later, the man has decided to sue the bus company because of this accident. Why? Because the bus company probably has some money and the drunken driver did not.

Every day in my newspaper I see articles about lawsuits against various entities that did absolutely nothing wrong and the only reason for these lawsuits is to extort money from that entity. The idea is to make one think that this is absolutely normal behavior on the part of our judicial system. It is in actuality legalized extortion.

So with apologies to the thousands of outstanding attorneys in this nation I now present an excerpt below from my first book to give you a little of the flavor of the situation and to remind you of one reason why this behavior on the part of our legal system takes place. Remember Democratic Party = Socialist Party.

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“The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers.” Shakespeare - Henry VI

If Franklin Roosevelt is the father of modern Socialism, if Amendment XVI gave Socialists the weapon, if the liberal media gave the Socialists the indoctrination power, then who are the foot soldiers in the Socialist Army? The trial lawyers. One thing you can say about most Socialists, they have good intentions. Unlike all the other Socialists, however, the trial lawyers have very little altruism. The driving force behind the trial lawyers is greed. The Socialists use this greed as a motivation to spur their army to action.

Sometime about forty years ago the Socialists grabbed control of the American Bar Association and used their lobbying influence to forge a bond with the Socialist Party. The deal, although never verbalized, went something like this: You (the Socialist Party) don’t pass any laws that will constrain our ability to litigate and win judgements, and we (the American Bar Association) will motivate our members to destroy the capitalist system for you. You don’t hinder us in our ability to litigate and win judgements against government entities, and we will help you redistribute wealth (all, of course, after we take our percentage).

The trial lawyers are the Brown Shirts of the United States of America. Instead of using clubs and fists to break in, steal merchandise and intimidate, they use writs and judgements to break in, steal merchandise, and intimidate. The result is the same. Find someone with money and confiscate it. What the trial lawyers have never grasped, however, is that just like Hitler’s Brown Shirts, they will become obsolete when the Socialist revolution no longer needs them. The trial lawyers, by their excesses, are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Hitler had to make a choice to obtain power between the Brown Shirts and the German Army - he chose the latter and purged Ernst Roehm and his organization. Such is the inevitable fate of all lawyers once the Socialist takeover is complete.

If we are to be a nation of laws we need lawyers and lots of them. The excesses of the trial lawyers must now be addressed, however, if we are to survive as a free nation with a free market system.

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Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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US Freedom Army

August 1, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

Woodrow Wilson - Our First Socialist President

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was the 28^th President of the United States serving from 1913 to 1921. 1913 was a bad year for freedom. In 1913 Amendment XVI (Income Tax) was ratified as well as Amendment XVII (Popular Election of Senators). The Federal Reserve Act was also passed in December 1913 but the worst event of 1913 was the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson on March 4, 1913. Were it not for the rift in the Republican Party and Theodore Roosevelt running on the Bull Moose Party ticket Wilson would have had no chance of winning and would have become a mere footnote in history. This nobody who had become a Democratic Prince was now crowned a King and no one ever elected President before or since did it with the same level of arrogance and smugness. Wilson, the former President of Princeton, had a PhD and he was going to use his superior knowledge to lead the poor ignorant masses to a new vision for America (sounds like Barack Obama, doesn’t it).

In his first term as President, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass major progressive reforms. Wilson pushed through in his first term a legislative agenda that few presidents have equaled including the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Farm Loan Act among many. If this was all he had done it would be exceptional, but he had bigger ideas in his theoretical head, ideas that would be used to destroy constitutional principles and give a theoretical basis for the descent into socialism.

Wilson, in his inaugural Address, used clever rhetoric to disguise the fact that he fundamentally disliked the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and wanted to see the Constitution altered to agree with socialist principles. Wilson ushered in the modern view that the Constitution is a “living document” which enabled activist judges to rewrite the Constitution according to the progressive notions of the day. Wilson cynically took the oath of office and agreed to “support and defend” the Constitution of the United States and then, once he had lowered his raised right hand, began the process of dismantling the very document he had sworn to uphold.

That Wilson would act in this way should have been no surprise to anyone who had read his writings carefully. Wilson challenged the relevance of the Declaration of Independence and claimed that the Declaration “is of no consequence to us unless we can translate its general terms into examples of the present day.” Instead of opposing the tyranny of intrusive government, Wilson wished to redirect the Declaration against the tyranny of corporations. The practical consequences would be increased government oversight of economic activities and peoples’ daily lives.

In Socialism and Democracy (1887), Wilson asserts that there is no essential difference in principle between socialism and democracy and that both rest on the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. In it he claims that both assert that “ … men as communities are supreme over men as individuals.” In it Wilson makes the astonishing claim that democracy, including American democracy, has no inherent regard for individual rights, whether natural or political, and therefore contains no principled limits on government power over individuals. He then assumes that “no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will” and proceeds to develop a progressive philosophy that takes from socialism “that all ideas of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view.” Wilson, believing that all political thought is controlled by the circumstances of the time in which it is developed, calls for a constitutional revolution to meet the “radically different” conditions of his time. Socialism and Democracy could easily be inserted into the Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx couldn’t have said it better!

Wilson, in his 1912 “New Freedom” speeches, defined progressivism as the belief that the laws need to keep up with changes in economic circumstances. He asserts that the progressive wants to adjust laws to the “facts of the case” since the law is ultimately an expression of the facts in legal relationships. Wilson views the future as the more glorious time and applauds the “modern idea” of leaving the past and pressing on to something new (USFA note: Socialists always look to the future since they are always convinced that the next time it will work – they hate to look to the past because they then must see the wreckage caused by their past social experiments). In his essay “Leaders of Men” Wilson says “(A true leader) must inflame their (the masses) passions with little heed for the facts. Men are as clay in the hands of a consummate leader.” (USFA note: Dictatorship 101).

In 1916 Wilson narrowly defeated Charles Evan Hughes in one of the closest elections in American history. It never occurred to Wilson that he did not have a mandate to govern even though as a sitting president he had barely won and in his first try it had required a third party candidacy to allow him to be elected. Wilson had campaigned for his second term under the slogan “He kept us out of war.” One month after being sworn in for his second term Wilson asked Congress to declare war. After the declaration of war, Wilson ushered in the most repressive regime in U.S. history. The internment of Japanese born U.S. citizens during World War II was minor compared to the actions against U.S. citizens by Wilson during World War I. During WWI Wilson passed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 which allowed him to shut down newspapers at an astounding pace. Any criticism of the government could earn a prison sentence and it is estimated that over 150,000 Americans were arrested during his second term.

Wilson’s two primary allies during his presidency were Colonel Edward M. House and Walter Lippmann. In 1912 House had written Phillip Dru: Administrator in which he promotes “socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx”. Even more insidious was the long time New York Times writer Walter Lippmann. On January 8, 1918 Wilson made his famous speech articulating America’s war aims and delineating his Fourteen Points. This speech was authored by Walter Lippmann and included a framework for the beginnings of an international government (socialist, of course) under the League of Nations. Lippmann continued to assault freedom with his socialist columns from the New York Times until he finally retired in 1967 to much praise from his collectivist soul brothers.

In September and October 1919 Wilson suffered a series of debilitating strokes and was rarely seen in public. His second wife, Edith Galt, controlled his life and decided what he would and would not address. Fortunately in 1919 the Republicans controlled the Senate and did not ratify the League of Nations, primarily due to its notorious Article X, which would have allowed the League to send the U.S. into war without the approval of the U.S. government. In 1945, when the United Nations was approved, no such wisdom prevailed.

Wilson seemed to regard himself as a school headmaster whose pupils (the populace) were to be controlled, educated and punished if they misbehaved (disagreed with him). He never grasped the fact that there were millions of Americans just as smart as he and they did not want to be controlled and educated nor did they much agree with his view of the world. The massive changes wrought by Wilson could have qualified him to be considered as the father of modern socialism except for one fact - during the next administration (1921-1929) many of his changes were reduced in scope and a few overturned or severely modified.

Wilson had many massive contributions to the descent into socialism but the major one was the notion that the Constitution is a living document. This myth has been promoted and institutionalized by socialist writers for the past 100 years and is considered standard fare for any liberal interpretation of the Constitution. It seems that Wilson had a Constitutional Convention in his own brain and decided that the correct version of the Constitution was the one he had concocted in his own imagination, not the one adopted in 1788. It was therefore easy for him to swear to “support and defend” the Constitution since he was referring to the Constitution that existed in his mind, not that other “obsolete” one that existed on paper. There were many presidents to come after Wilson that agreed to “support and defend” the Constitution that existed somewhere in Woodrow Wilson’s mind and that was established by Wilson’s imaginary Constitutional Convention.

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US Freedom Army

July 22, 2016

The British exit (Brexit) from the European Union (EU) was a breath of fresh air. Even though 52% to 48% is hardly a large margin of victory at least it gives us hope that some people in the world are beginning to wise up to the corrosive effects of global socialism and how they are being taken in by the Globalists whose primary goal is a world government based upon socialist (Marxist) principles. The Globalists, whose only interest is in political power, could care less about the continuous failures of socialism and only want to create a world where they are in charge. As I have said before, a socialist world government would turn the entire planet into one gigantic North Korea and would be a disaster for mankind.

You cannot have a political union without a central government and a military supporting that government. You cannot have a currency without a central government and a military supporting that government that can enforce discipline on the members (I realize that Britain does not participate in the Euro currency system). These setups are destined to fail and it is only a matter of time until they do so. These setups are an attempt by the Globalists to backdoor their way to achieving a world government under their domination and when these setups fail they will create tremendous hardships for millions of people.

Great Britain now has a chance to escape from the dictates of unelected bureaucrats who tell them how to behave and Britain can now possibly get their financial house in order and begin the process of returning to the financial and political powerhouse they once were. Only time will tell if they can make that a reality. They can also begin the process of reestablishing their sovereignty and controlling their borders. There have to be some in Britain who are now wondering if the Chunnel was a big mistake.

The United States should learn a lesson from this and disentangle itself from these situations where unelected citizens of other countries control our destiny and dictate to us how we can act and what we should be doing. Perhaps one day soon enough people in the United States will also wise up and this process can begin.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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US Freedom Army

July 15, 2016

Below is a letter to the editor from my local newspaper that I keep in my wallet to remind me of how much wrong-thinking there is about the U.S. Constitution. In the interest of keeping all you patriots enlightened about how the Constitution is to be viewed I present that letter with my comments after it. If I do nothing else with the U.S. Freedom Army I want to ensure that all of you know your Constitution and how it is to be interpreted.

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Founders would have liked Health Care Plan

In regard to health care, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’s letter (“Obama’s Trojan Horse rolling in,” Op-Ed March 22) says “A right? I just reread my Constitution … (and) the Founding Fathers did not put anything in there about a God-given right to health insurance. Not even the right to good health.”

In my copy of the Constitution, the first sentence states “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 … .” So, one of the main reasons for establishing the Constitution was to promote general welfare. I would assume that would include keeping its citizens healthy. I think the Founding Fathers would have approved of a single-payer health system.

Signed,

yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

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Most of you that have been reading our material and studying the Constitution know why the letter above is completely inaccurate. We believe the individual above sincerely believed what he had written was true but that individual is one of many that have been completely taken in by the false interpretations of our Constitution repeated by the Main-Stream Media ad nauseam until eventually people believe these falsehoods to be the truth.

The Welfare Clause (“promote the general Welfare”) is limiting. I could give you numerous quotes here from the people who wrote the Constitution but suffice it to say that the Founding Fathers said that just because we told you to provide for the general welfare does not mean you can have any powers we have not already given you. In other words, you cannot use the Welfare Clause as an excuse to exceed the enumerated powers in the Constitution (found generally in Article 1, Section 8). The Welfare Clause is not a catchall that can be used to circumvent the Constitution’s limiting powers.

There is absolutely no authority whatsoever in the Constitution given to the Federal Government to control healthcare in any way, shape or form. The Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, any changes to the ACA are unconstitutional and any replacement for the ACA is also unconstitutional. The only way the Federal Government can legally control healthcare is to amend the Constitution and that amendment has not been forthcoming.

The Center for Disease Control is a good example of the Federal Government providing for the general welfare as long as the CDC does not tell the States or the people what to do. There is a difference between offering suggestions to help and establishing control to issue edicts.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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US Freedom Army

June 13, 2016

This post was submitted to the U.S. Freedom Army by enlistee Jim Delaney of Rochester, NY. Jim is a former U.S. Army Captain and a Vietnam veteran with two Bronze Stars and he is the author of the book “A Patriot’s Call to Action: Resisting Progressive Tyranny & Restoring Constitutional Order.”

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Revisiting Secession: A Constitutional Check to Federal Tyranny

Regarding the nature of this hallowed union of States, Americans must never, ever forget how the Founders viewed this union and the States which comprise it.

We must get past the adolescent, uninformed, politically correct and self-destructive notion that this union is inviolably indissoluble. This union is not indivisible and never has been. To believe otherwise defies logic, commonsense and flies in the face of our founders’ understanding. Despite the relentless brainwashing over the years, a little honest research—without the blinders—is all that is required for readers to clearly understand the unassailability of a State’s right to secede.

From its inception, the United States of America has been a voluntary association of sovereign States. In truth, no States were coerced to become members of that association. The union is a contractual association, a compact of independent sovereign States, any of which may secede from that association should the other party to that contract, that being the federal government, fails to uphold its contractual obligations.

To illustrate this point, as a condition of their ratifying the US Constitution, Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly reserved their right to secede, and no objections from the Founders were raised. And, in accordance with the 10th Amendment, because the Constitution does not prohibit secession that power, like all other powers not specifically delegated to the federal government or specifically denied to the States, is indisputably reserved to the States.

No amount of revisionist history, nationalism, lawyerly contrivances, political obfuscation, or otherwise misguided case law can nullify that fundamental truth. No branch of the federal government is sovereign and supreme. The States and their citizens, the creators of the federal government, are sovereign and supreme, and that is the way our founders intended it to be.

Further, without the approval of a duly-elected State legislature or, should it be impossible to timely convene the legislature, an invitation of the Governor, may force of arms be applied by either the federal government or sister States to quell rebellion within a particular State or to otherwise impose the union’s will on any member of that compact. Because a misapplication of military force against a State or States may have been perpetrated in the past can in no way render that action lawful or constitutional today or in the future.

To be specific, Article IV, Sec 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides that “The US shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” As such, it provides that the federal government shall protect each of the States of the union “against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the governor (when the legislature cannot be timely convened) against domestic violence.”

Extremely important to note is the admonition of James Madison respecting this federal guarantee: in Federalist 43, he stated that the authority of the federal union “extends no further than to a guaranty of a republican form of government”…and that “whenever the States may choose to substitute other republican forms, they have a right to do so.”

Conveniently overlooked by “nationalists”, proponents of a supreme central government, is the fact that during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison, father of the Constitution, expressed his revulsion with the notion of the federal government’s committing armed force against any State for any reason outside that limited purpose clearly provided for in Art IV, Sec 4, asserting that “a Union of States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction,” saying that “the use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war” and, to the party being assailed, “would probably be considered as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it was bound [to the union}.”

Thus, again, the only instance when the States or the federal authority may use force of

arms against a State is if that State violates Art IV Sec 4 of the Constitution, a provision which mandates that all State governments be republican in design. And only if a foreign entity has seized control of that State’s republican apparatus, thus rendering the legislature something other than duly-elected and/or the governor something other than duly-authorized, may the States and/or the federal government apply military force to bring that State back into compliance with the Constitution.

That said, with the acquiescence of Congress, it is manifestly obvious that Pres. Lincoln, for whatever reason, political or otherwise, grossly exceeded his constitutional authority by committing armed forces against the seceding Confederate States of America in 1861, plunging this nation into one of the bloodiest and costliest wars in its history. And only by force of arms and a gun to their heads did the victorious North illegally compel the vanquished southern States to officially repudiate their inherent constitutional right to secede–which begs the question that if the States did not have the residual and inherent authority to secede then why would they be required to renounce that authority?

Asserting that the union was somehow indivisible, a concocted notion entirely foreign to the Founders, Mr. Lincoln, with much patriotic fervor, political fanfare, lofty rhetoric, and faulty argumentation, brazenly flouted the constitution with impunity by violating the sacred right of those 11 sovereign States to legally secede from this voluntary union. In truth, the Founders well-understood that this union of States was never intended to be any more perpetual, aka eternal, than the confederation of States which preceded it, and that the union’s survival was solely dependent upon the parties to the compact fully upholding their obligations under that contract.

It should be remembered that when any suggestion of calling forth military force against a State was brought up in the Constitutional or State Ratifying Conventions, the notion of indivisibility was unanimously rejected by both framers and ratifiers alike. Irresistible and unavoidable conclusion: by plunging the union into war with the Confederate States of America, our childhood hero, Abraham Lincoln, was in clear violation of the original meaning, intent and spirit of the Constitution. In short, Mr. Lincoln was dead wrong and our history teachers and textbooks have routinely and ignorantly foisted the myth of indivisibility upon generations of gullible children.

In all of my research over the years, there has been no evidence that the myopic notion of union at any price was ever conceived of or in any way embraced by the Founders. In fact, there’s considerable evidence that the Founders viewed the very concept of indivisibility as dangerous. The States’ inherent rights to secede, to interpose, and to resist an overreaching central government remain as unmistakable, unambiguous and unalienable today as they were in 1787.

For future reference, let that truth sink in. To safeguard individual liberty, constitutional governance, and the sovereignty of the States, the immediate fiduciary agents of We the People, if our resistance to tyranny must necessarily entail secession, then that rightful form of resistance must be fully embraced and fearlessly acted upon.

If the clear choice is liberty or union, can there be any doubt as to a free people’s choice? Of course not. And the Founders knew that very well.

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Some Advice to “Secession Petitioners”

Historically, short of revolution or rebellion, secession is the ultimate practical check on centralization.

No branch of the federal government is empowered to decide upon the merits of a State’s inherent right to secede. By its very nature, secession is an anti-federal act not requiring federal sanction.

Petitioning the federal government for permission to secede is self-contradictory and has no basis in English common law or American constitutional history. Secession, aka rescission, withdrawal, is a unilateral action and is not dependent upon mutual agreement between the parties to that contract.

Bottom line: when one enters into a contract and the other party violates that contract, does one request permission of the offending party to withdraw from that contract already violated? Of course not. All compacts are subject to the equitable remedy of rescission in the event of a breach of contract. It’s really common sense and basic contract law. It’s that straightforward.

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At its inception, the US of A was a voluntary compact (contract) of sovereign States, each retaining the inherent authority to rescind its contractual relationship with the federal government, the other party to that contract, should the latter violate the terms of that contract/compact. That contractual relationship hasn’t changed, though the misnamed “civil war” may have led us to believe otherwise. (By the way, “civil war” means that two or more factions are militarily struggling over control of the central government; however, in America’s so-called “civil war”, the South was defending its sovereign territory, not entertaining the capture and control of the central government in DC or of the northern territories.)

Force of arms alone by a revisionist, self-contradictory, union-at-any-price nationalist, that being our heretofore venerated Abe Lincoln, cannot–and did not–invalidate a State’s inherent right to secede, or to otherwise rescind its ratification of this constitutional contract, no more than the federal government can legally or constitutionally annul the People’s right to rebel in the face of tyranny. Note: if secession were treasonous, which some maintained it was, why then were not southern leaders dragged into court following the North’s successful invasion of the Confederate States of America? Easy. Because the North didn’t want to lose in court what they thought they had won on the battlefield.

Fact: Perpetual union at any price was never contemplated or embraced by the Founders. Rebellion, secession, nullification, civil disobedience have remained essential elements of America’s republican fabric, and the threat or application of force on the part of the federal government cannot eradicate those foundational, inherent and unalienable rights of a free people.

When ratifying the Constitution, and only to the extent that it delegated certain of its sovereign powers to the federal government, not once did any State surrender its sovereignty. All powers voluntarily granted by the States to the federal government were very limited and very specific. All other powers, specifically enumerated or not, not delegated remained with the States. The 10th Amendment enshrined that principle in the Constitution and, in so doing, reasserted the foundational principle that the federal government cannot unilaterally redefine the limits of its powers. To join the union, the States were not compelled to surrender anything, much less their sovereignty. Those few and specific State powers delegated to the federal government were granted freely and willingly on the understanding that both parties are obliged to fully comply with the covenant.

And remember, we not only seceded from England, but also, one by one, from the Articles of Confederation (which was said to be “perpetual”) in order to form a “more perfect union” of States, a union which was initially comprised of but 9 States, the remaining 3 sovereign States freely opting to remain outside the association until well after the Constitution’s adoption.

This “more perfect union”–MORE perfect, not PERFECT–was not intended nor expected to exist in perpetuity, but, like the Articles of Confederation, only until such time that the compact outlived its usefulness or if the parties to that contract violated its terms.

Our Founders, studious historians, were not stupid men and well understood the corruptibility of men and all that man may devise. While they hoped the union would be strong, free and productive, they did not view secession and dissolution as ill-conceived, treasonous or unanticipated. We’ve just been brainwashed into believing that secession and dissolution are vile, wrong, corrupt and treasonous. Not so at all. If that were true, then our Founders were charlatans and short-sighted fools. They weren’t.

All that said, as a first step I recommend that States opt for nullification, the “rightful remedy” as Jefferson described it, to resist unconstitutional acts by the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Chief Executive and their myriad bureaucracies which now comprise the unofficial fourth branch of government. And to render nullification more efficacious, States should enact punitive laws to prohibit the enforcement of those federal acts nullified by the State. This is called “interposition”, or a State’s insinuating itself between intrusive federal authority and the citizens of the State. Interposition would actually require the arrest, trial and imprisonment of any State OR federal agent who attempts to enforce a nullified federal act. Of course, implicit in nullification is the threat of secession should the invasive federal government fail to retreat within contractual parameters. But, again, secession is not by its nature treasonous or unavoidably violent. Not at all.

Finally, while I sincerely appreciate the wave of secessionist sentiment sweeping the country, secession, a serious constitutional matter, requires a majority of a State’s residents to support the act. Anything less than a majority constitutes a protest and nothing more. And even with a majority expressing its support for secession, the people’s State representatives must be won over as well, this if the label of “insurrection” and the invocation of Art I Sec 8 Para 15 are to be avoided.

Note: per Art IV Sec 4 of the Constitution, “on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened)”, the feds can be asked to intervene, whether that intervention is morally repugnant or not. Secession is a political act, not merely a feel-good act. Thus, on the subject of secession, both the people of a State and their duly elected State representatives must be of one mind on the issue of secession.

The million or so citizens who recently petitioned the White House to grant them permission to secede was great PR—maybe—but without any basis in commonsense or constitutional law.

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(“The source of Lincoln’s power was his willingness to exercise power not grounded in the original Constitution but in his creative abilities to undermine the Constitution while rhetorically defending it.” Donald Livingston, “Rethinking the American Union…”)

(“The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The people alone, as we have already seen, hold the power to alter their constitution.” William Rawles, 1825)

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US Freedom Army

May 27, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

The story of David and Goliath is told in 1 Samuel chapter 17. Saul and the Israelites are facing the Philistines in the valley of Elah. For forty days Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, comes out to challenge the Israelites to send out a champion to meet him. The Israelites are afraid of Goliath and refuse the challenge. David is present, having brought food for his elder brothers. David hears that Saul has offered a reward to anyone who can defeat Goliath and accepts the challenge. David takes his sling and five stones and confronts Goliath. David selects a stone and hurls it with all his might and hits Goliath in the forehead and Goliath falls to the ground. David seizes Goliath’s sword and cuts off Goliath’s head. The young boy has slain the giant.

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Fast forward – David is now the King of Israel. David builds the greater Israel.

First – David conquers Moab. 2 Samuel 8:2. Just to be sure there are no “protests” he kills two out of every three Moabites. There weren’t too many peaceful protests or sit-ins in those days.

Second – David conquers Edom. 2 Samuel 8:14. He orders Joab to kill every Edomite soldier. 1 Kings 11:15-18. David is apparently going soft.

Third – David conquers Zobah, Damascus and Hamath. 2 Samuel 8:2-3. We don’t know what happened to the armies that fought in these battles against David but we’ll bet it wasn’t pretty.

Fourth- David conquers Ammon. 2 Samuel 10. A long siege with that little Bathsheba/Uriah problem thrown in. David goes easy on the Ammonites, he’s really getting soft now.

This is middle-eastern diplomacy, circa 1000 B.C. We are certain that if any one of us had lived at that time we could have identified many people who wished Goliath had won.

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Many citizens of this country think that the reason we are free from foreign military invasions is because other citizens of the world love and respect us. The actual reason we are free is because other governments of the world are afraid of us and know what we are capable of doing. The U.S. Military represents about 45% of the military strength of the entire world and could take on militarily the entire rest of the planet combined and have a reasonable chance of prevailing. When you are number one you should start acting like you are number one and tell the troublemakers how they should behave. If it requires a little 1000 B.C. diplomacy to make our point of view crystal clear we should not be reluctant to act accordingly.

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Leftist Bullies & America's Future

May 16, 2016

Amidst the presidential campaign maelstrom, the relentless Progressive violations of our liberties, traditional values, religious freedom, free enterprise, and constitutional underpinnings continue. Now this:

Until I recently read about the 16 Attorneys General--all Progressives, of course--who are promising to target any company that challenges Liberalism's climate change RELIGION, I honestly thought I was beyond being shocked by the Left's propensity for tyranny and bullying.

Reminiscent of the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition of 1478, these fascist high priests intend to vigorously pursue corporate "climate change deniers" to the "fullest extent of the law"--whatever contrived law that might be.

Asserting that "climate change deniers" are committing "fraud" and are, therefore, unprotected by that pesky First Amendment, these modern-day inquisitors--New York State's AG Schneiderman being among them--plan to impose huge fines against anyone who declines to blindly submit to their scientifically unproven man-made global warming religious dogma. ("I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before me." Schneiderman and his co-collaborators have clearly forgotten this divine admonition.)

This undisguised attempt to stifle core political speech and vigorous SCIENTIFIC debate should be roundly condemned by all Americans! AG Schneiderman, among other inquisitors, should not only apologize for his loathsome thuggery; he should either resign or be removed from office.

Is it any wonder the citizens of this deeply divided country are in the throes of despair, uncertainty and anger? Is it any wonder that desperate Americans are turning to "outsiders" like Donald Trump? Is it any wonder that secessionist movements, most notably the Texas Nationalist Movement, are gaining in strength, support and determination?

Make no mistake, folks. Our Founders would NEVER EVER have tolerated the tyranny which now assails us at every turn and from every direction. To a man, they would have full-throatedly counseled civil disobedience, State nullification and, if all else fails, either secession or outright rebellion.

And this: NOTHING--absolutely NOTHING--the British did to Americans in the 18th century which convinced American colonists to secede from England can in any way compare to the awful intensity of today's Progressive assault on our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And in this terrible light, is it really a stretch to reasonably suggest that this union of sovereign States (as originally conceived anyway) has, in fact, finally outlived its usefulness. (Personally, I believe that our societal, political and economic problems are now so severe and so embedded as to be effectively irremediable. No Pollyanna I.)

So, we can either continue to submit to or otherwise accommodate the intolerable, or we can exercise our unalienable rights to appropriately resist. In any event, I urge all patriots to look solemnly to our Founders for wisdom and direction in these extremely troubling times. And remember this: unalienable rights are unalienable only to the extent we are determined to defend them.
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"The chasm between conservatives and liberals grows wider by the day. We live in a house divided. This profound difference between people on the Right and Left will have to be managed with diligence if our country is not to fragment and fall apart. Great leadership will be required. This, not income inequality, is the moral issue of our time." Ed Kline, Writer/Reporter (2015)

"Given that the rise of Sanders theatens to extirpate the last vestiges of classical liberalism in the Democratic Party, there has never been a time in my life when limited and accountable government in the United States is under great threat...classical liberalism will continue to decline." John O. McGinnis, Writer & Professor of Constitutional Law, Northwestern University (2016)

"...any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better." Congressman Abraham Lincoln on the floor of Congress (1847)

"Whenever the people shall grow weary of the exiting government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." Pres. Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural Address (1861)

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The Baseline Budgeting Scam

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

May 11, 2017

Baseline budgeting is a method whereby automatic increases in spending are built into each year’s budget through a baseline – a complex system known legally only in general terms that allows the Office of Management& Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to essentially determine and “score” the level of increase for each department.

This system creates a built in bias that always causes federal spending to increase. Even more deceitful is the way this is presented to the public. So, for example, let us say that the baseline for the Department of Education was 8%. This would mean that in the next fiscal year the Department of Education budget would increase by 8%. If the Department of Education only received a 4% increase from Congress it would be “scored” that the government had “saved” 4%. If the Department of Education budget was $100 billion in year 2001 and should have gone to $108 billion in 2002 but only received $104 billion, it was called a budget reduction and a “savings” of $4 billion.

Even more incredible is the outcry when supposedly responsible legislators call these results “budget cuts in education” and assert that people who sponsored and supported such cuts “want to cut funding for education and damage our children’s education.” The level of deceit in such rhetoric is beyond reprehensible.

The baseline budgeting scam works something like this. Phase one is to load up the OMB and CBO with people you can control and share your vision that more government is the answer to all problems. Phase two is to be certain that the rules are so muddled that no one understands how the baseline is computed. Phase three is to get the baselines set as high as can possibly be justified with some pseudo-rational explanation based upon some mind-numbing technical jargon that no one understands. Phase four is to come in just slightly under the total increase so you can claim you are cutting the budget. Phase five is to whine about the budget cuts and pretend you are fighting for “the children” or “the poor” or “old people” or any other group that arouses sympathy while you are still claiming to be fiscally responsible. Phase six is to demand more spending next year since we will all be suffering because of these “cuts.”

I have said this before but I’ll say it again. Do not believe any number that comes from this administration. People that support and administer such a system are either delusional or are intending to deceive. Since most Congressmen are not delusional you can say with reasonable certainty what they are intending.

Lewis Shupe

********************* “Economics is not an exact science.” Ronald Reagan

April 14, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, Contrtibutor, Freedom Fighters of America

Economics is not only inexact, but economic theories depend upon assumptions about what people will do under certain sets of conditions. When people do not “behave” as assumed, economic theories break down. One thing you can say with reasonable certainty, however, is that when the government interferes in the pricing mechanisms of the free marketplace, problems are bound to follow.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is indisputably the most influential economist of the 20^th century. He is one of the principal founders of modern macroeconomics and a proponent of massive government spending to cure economic ills. If John Dewey is the favorite philosopher of Socialists, Keynes is by far their favorite economist. Keynes is idolized by the left because he intellectualized and gave theoretical support for the Socialist takeover of government. Since the Socialists were unable for practical reasons to follow Karl Marx and convert capitalist countries into socialist states, Keynes was the next best thing. In his magnum opus, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” (1936), Keynes laid the foundation for macroeconomics.

If the federal government followed Keynes exactly perhaps their meddling in the private sector would be manageable. Socialists are interested in economic theory only insofar as it gives them what they want – centralized political power. Keynes legitimatized the federal government’s takeover of the States and helped foster the notion that whenever someone has a problem, the federal government is supposed to step in with a solution. This notion created a culture of dependency that has led to the development of a class of people depending on the government either for their work or their survival. This class of people is called the Socialist ”critical mass” and now helps control elections for them.

For those of you unwilling to read Keynes’ magnum opus, we will summarize it for you in Washington D.C. terms. This is not what Keynes said, but what Washington does. There is a “magic button” somewhere in Washington that, if pushed, will correct all the economic problems of the country. Just keep trying things and pushing buttons and eventually you will push the “magic button” and all your problems will go away. If you have to spend two or three trillion dollars trying buttons it is fine because eventually you will push the “magic button.” The “magic button” causes people to want to work harder, makes corporations more profitable, encourages hiring, and eliminates high interest rates and inflation. Of course no one knows which button is the magic one, so we just go ahead and push every button we see.

Keynes wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace: “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Winston Churchill was quoted as saying: “If you put two economists in a room you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three.”

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In the 1980s the Nobel Prize committee was captured by Socialists and since that time it is no longer politically correct to award a Nobel Prize in certain categories (Peace and Economics in particular) to anyone who is not a committed Socialist. Prior to that time, however, Conservatives did win a few times including Milton Friedman in 1976 for Economics.

In 1974 the Austrian economist Friedrich August Von Hayek (1899-1992) won the Nobel Prize for Economics. He and Keynes had been battling for over 40 years and finally Hayek received his due recognition.

In the big debate (which continues to this day) over the impossibility of socialist calculation and “market socialism” in the 1930s, with Mises and Hayek on one side and Keynes, Lange, and H.D. Dickinson on the other, Hayek contributed a number of essays which refuted the socialist approach to economic planning. They are collected in his Individualism and Economic Order (1948). Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) made him world famous overnight and aroused heated discussions. In this best seller of the immediate post-war years, since translated into numerous languages, he showed that Socialism carries with it no adequate provision for the preservation of freedom.

Hayek took the elitist Socialists to task in his Nobel Prize lecture on December 11, 1974 “The pretence of knowledge.” This may be why no Conservatives win this prize anymore; the Socialists on the Committee don’t want to hear anything like this again. It almost sounded like Socrates in “The Apology”, letting them have it. A few excerpts follow.

“We have good reason to believe that unemployment indicates that the structure of relative prices and wages has been distorted (usually by monopolistic or governmental price fixing) and that to restore equality between the demand and supply of labour in all sectors changes of relative prices and some transfers of labour will be necessary.”

USFA translation: Government meddling in the pricing structure causes unemployment.

“This is particularly true of our theories accounting for the determination of the systems of relative prices and wages that will form themselves on a well functioning market. Into the determination of these prices and wages there will enter the effects of particular information possessed by every one of the participants in the market process – a sum of facts which in their totality cannot be known to the scientific observer, or to any other single brain. It is indeed the source of the superiority of the market order, and the reason why, when it is not suppressed by government, it regularly displaces other types of order … ”

USFA translation: The free market works best when left alone.

“ … the very measures which the dominant “macro-economic” theory has recommended as a remedy for unemployment, namely the increase of aggregate demand, have become a cause of a very extensive misallocation of resources which is likely to make large-scale unemployment inevitable. The continuous injection of additional amounts of money at points of the economic system where it creates a temporary demand which must cease when the increase of the quantity of money stops or slows down, together with the expectation of a continuing rise of prices, draws labour and other resources into employments which can last only so long as the increase of the quantity of money continues at the same rate - or perhaps even only so long as it continues to accelerate at a given rate. What this policy has produced is not so much a level of employment that could not have been brought about in other ways, as a distribution of employment which cannot be indefinitely maintained and which after some time can be maintained only by a rate of inflation which would rapidly lead to a disorganisation of all economic activity. The fact is that by a mistaken theoretical view we have been led into a precarious position in which we cannot prevent substantial unemployment from re-appearing … ”

USFA translation: Macroeconomics does not work and causes unemployment and large scale inflation. There is no “magic button”.

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Who are these socialists?

April 13, 2016

By Lewis Shupe, US Freedom Army

“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.” Eric Hoffer

Before we take up this topic we need to make a few points. Socialists and communists have the same goal namely a world government based upon Marxist principles. They only differ as to method. Communists prefer revolution while socialists prefer gradual infiltration. The Social Democrats are nothing more than a group that split off from the Communist Party because they prefer the more gradual approach. Other than that there is little difference and no difference as to what they want to accomplish. The United States with its emphasis on freedom stands in the way of these Marxists achieving their goals and so the United States must be converted into a socialist nation as rapidly as possible.

The hard core socialists are a very small percentage of the U.S. population, probably less than two percent. Socialism does an excellent job of packaging their product and so it attracts many to their cause and those numbers are increasing, particularly among younger people who are not wise enough yet to see through the smoke screen that socialism throws around their message. The indoctrinated people form a certain percentage of the socialist following and some prime examples of indoctrinated socialists are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and of course Bernie Sanders, who is the only one of those three with the courage to describe accurately what he actually believes in.

There is also a large group of people that follow the message because it is in their best interests to do so since they depend on the government for either their work or their survival. Lenin called members of this group “useful idiots.”

I wanted to talk today about the most dangerous group of all, the true believers. If you want to know precisely how true believers operate I suggest you get the book The True Believer by Eric Hoffer and read it over carefully. I will give you a brief synopsis here. A true believer is someone who believes that their life is spoiled and in order to give their life meaning they must have a cause. A true believer doesn’t really care what the cause is as long as he has one. For anyone that wants a cause socialism is always available to the true believer. A true believer easily accepts that America is evil and will do everything to bring down this system of government. A true believer will do anything in his power to see the cause come to a successful conclusion including violating any and all laws as required. Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn are examples of true believers. These people are extremely dangerous and will stop at nothing to see that their cause is victorious and, if they are victorious, they will simply move on to the next cause!

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March 28, 2016

by Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

"The Budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome will become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance." - Cicero, 55 BC

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Every time I write about financial matters people quickly become bored. I have tried to stop giving speeches about financial matters because at the end I always get a lot of quizzical looks. At the risk of generating boredom and quizzical looks I venture forward because this is important since, if nothing changes, this will one day affect everyone. Stay with me here and I’ll try to make it as brief as possible.

The U.S. Government spends about 80-120 billion dollars a month more than it takes in. It gets the money it needs to cover this shortfall by issuing various debt instruments through the U.S. Treasury. This causes the U.S. debt to increase by the amount of these debt instruments which causes the interest on the debt to continue to rise. If this were the only problem it would be bad enough, but there is an even more devastating problem that this shortfall creates.

The primary problem is that the U.S. Government cannot sell all this debt to legitimate buyers (foreign governments, institutions, individuals, etc.) and so it buys the debt itself. It buys this debt using a variety of subterfuges but the net result is that the Federal Reserve has to print money in order to keep the government running. Approximately 30%-50% of the shortfall is financed in this way and those percentages continue to increase. As any businessman can tell you, when you have to buy your own products to continue to show sales you are in deep trouble. Ask yourself why the Social Security Administration, which claims to be going broke, holds three trillion dollars of our debt (note that China holds about 1.25 trillion dollars of our debt and Japan about 1 trillion dollars of our debt).

When you create money but do not create a corresponding amount of wealth the value of money deteriorates and price increases soon follow. The inflation that will follow on the heels of this money creation will soon become evident to all citizens, regardless of all the false information coming from the government. When it will become evident depends on the individual citizen but it will ultimately become evident to virtually everyone.

In my wallet I keep a Zimbabwe 100 trillion dollar bill to remind myself of where America is heading if nothing is done. You can purchase one on-line for about $3 which is probably the cost of the paper and shipping. When the forces of socialism succeed in breaking down America financially the Republic is gone and your freedom goes with it.

Lewis Shupe, Founder

www.usfreedomarmy.com

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The Beehive Mentality

March 14, 2016

by Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

Bees are social creatures. They bring food back to the hive and that food is shared commonly by all the hive members. Socialists love bee colonies. Bees have been around in the same form for at least 100 million years and are proof to socialists that communal living and sharing can bring to mankind the same long term success as has been enjoyed by the bees. The socialists, as is their wont, conveniently leave out an important fact. When the colony decides that a bee is not working hard enough they kill him and throw him out of the nest. They do not even want his DNA anywhere in the nest. This rarely happens to worker bees since a worker bee instinctively knows what fate awaits him if he doesn’t produce. It happens to the lazy drones a lot, though, and especially when food stores get low. The only reason the beehive tolerates any drones at all is because they are the only ones that can fertilize the queen. There are no sick days or retirement plans in a beehive – you must produce every day or you are eliminated. Maybe socialism might work if a mechanism were found to eliminate the slackers but an effective one has not been found to date.

This is the essence of collectivism. Everyone goes out and works and brings everything they have worked for to the hive (the federal government) and then the hive (the federal government) decides how much you get back. Since there is no mechanism available to the hive (the federal government) for eliminating slackers eventually people realize that they will get just as much back whether they work hard or not and so people stop working hard or simply do not work at all. This is why all these collectivist systems always fail and why they always evolve into dictatorships as the only way to protect themselves from complete destruction. This is why socialists want high tax rates, to get all the money into the hive (the federal government) so it can be redistributed. If the forces of socialism thought they could get away with a 100% tax rate they would advocate one. Don’t be fooled by “we only want to tax the wealthy at these high rates” because eventually they will come for you too. The 16^th Amendment (Income Tax) passed and was enacted in 1913 because people were told “we are only going to tax the wealthy.”

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March 6, 2016

by Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

In a previous post we exposed some of the problems with our current Constitutional definition of citizenship and showed some of the problems it poses for individuals who are having difficulty getting their eligibility. We discussed in that post some of the difficulties Ted Cruz is having with his eligibility to be President. We also believe Marco Rubio, although he is a citizen, is not at present under the Constitution a natural born citizen and is therefore not constitutionally eligible to be President since at the time of his birth neither of his parents were citizens. Having said all of this, we believe the peoples’ representatives now need to look at the Constitution and redefine citizenship in a way that is more appropriate for the modern world.

In 1787 when citizenship was defined a family was making great progress if they could travel 20 miles per day. In 1868 when Amendment XIV, which further redefined citizenship, was adopted, a family was making great progress if they could travel 50 miles in a day. Today a family can travel almost anywhere on planet Earth in one day. What made sense in 1787 and 1868 to lawmakers does not make as much sense today, particularly with the disintegration of the nuclear family that we now, unfortunately, see so often.

The Constitutional Amendment we are seeking should have as a minimum these four points included and specified in detail:

* The criteria for citizenship should to be changed. We will discuss this in more detail below.

* Dual citizenship should be made illegal. Dual citizens should declare for one country or another or their citizenship may be automatically revoked.

* A person’s citizenship may be revoked. This should only be in extreme cases and may require a jury trial. For example, the U.S. citizen that fought for the Taliban against the United States should have had his citizenship revoked.

* It should be reaffirmed that non-citizens are not necessarily guaranteed protection under the U.S. Constitution, particularly if they have acted illegally.

The general criteria for citizenship should be that if your mother (the female contributor of your DNA) is a citizen at the time of your birth then you are a citizen and a natural born citizen. At the time of your birth if you do not meet this criterion you are not a citizen. Without getting into all the complications (adoptions, naturalization, test tube babies, etcetera) that may arise later and may allow an individual to become a citizen this should be the fundamental rule for citizenship.

So why do we exclude the male contributors? It takes a female approximately 9 months to produce a child so a female is limited as to how many children she can produce in her lifetime. A male can produce several children in a 9 month period and, if he is a good talker, probably several more. Furthermore, it is much easier to determine who the mother is and often not as easy in today’s world to determine who is the father.

This is a fundamental problem with our political system namely that the Constitution is never updated to reflect conditions in the modern world and so we are always having to use rules that may be outmoded or obsolete. The only way to modify these rules is by amendment and because it is not easy to amend the Constitution our politicians try to sneak around the rules by ignoring the Constitution, writing laws that amend the Constitution, or by getting their ideological friends placed in the court systems to find clever legal ways (legal sophistry) to change the meaning of words and circumvent the rules. This is why we see chaos in government, why our system of government is out of control, and why we refer to it as a rogue government.

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US Freedom Army

By Lewis Shupe, Contributor, Freedom Fighters of America

February 21, 2016

Administrative law. What is it and how does it come about? It is important that one understands this concept because it explains much of what is happening in America today.

In general Congress and State Legislatures write vague laws. The reasons for this are many but a main reason is that if they write specific laws they will lose voters and may not get reelected. What happens then is that when the vague law is written the power to determine what the law actually means is turned over to the Executive Branch of the legal body in question. In effect the Legislatures have given their power over to the Executive Branch in order to not be shackled with the specifics of a law so that they can always say they were not in favor of something or in favor of something as it becomes necessary. Administrative law occurs when the Executive Branch determines the specifics of what the law really means. The net effect of all this is that the Legislature ultimately loses its power and the Executive Branch becomes dominant while the Legislative Branch becomes meaningless.

The forces of socialism understand this perfectly and that is why they are not as disturbed when they lose control of a Legislature. They know that if they have control over the Executive Branch they have seized control of about 90 percent of the power. This is one reason Barack Obama can write Executive Orders to make law – in many cases the power has been given to him by administrative law. Certainly our current President has also shown himself to be adept at writing Executive Orders that contradict provisions of a law that are in fact quite specific.

In the coming national elections the Socialist (oops Democratic) Party knows that it must win the White House at all costs and they will do whatever it takes to accomplish that task. The legality or illegality of their efforts will not matter as they seek the ultimate prize.