By Michael Oberndorf, RPA ——Bio and Archives--June 9, 2012
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
“The ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up, rather than the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than a frontal assault.”Today, we see this being done by Democrats, NGOs, and Establishment Republicans on a daily basis. In the past 60 years, nearly all of our presidents, secretaries of Treasury, State, and Defense, a large portion of their staffs, and a few generals like Wesley Clark and Colin Powell have been CFR members. Though they claim to be non-partisan, they are anything but. To become a member, you must be nominated, and then seconded by three more members, making it virtually impossible for other than a hand-picked token conservative to become a member. Besides William F. Buckley, no real conservatives have been or are currently members. This includes longtime member, Newt Gingrich, who is a Third-Way socialist. A lot has been written about the CFR, especially by those who would have you believe its critics are all black helicopter conspiracy nuts. However, there’s a lot of excellent in-depth analysis that makes it pretty clear who and what the CFR is all about (Here; Here; and Here). Clearly, the CFR and its journal, Foreign Relations are not the venue for presenting patriot’s ideas on preserving the Constitution, American sovereignty, and the Rule of Law. So it is very disturbing when the Chief of Staff of the United States Army writes an article that advocates, in blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, the use of the military as a domestic police force to deal with:
“…challenges in the United States itself…Where appropriate we will also dedicate active-duty forces, especially those with niche skills and equipment, to provide civilian officials with a robust set of reliable and rapid response options.”A civilian advocating the use of federal armed forces against American citizens is about as brazen an act of subversion of the Constitution as I can imagine. A top general doing so amounts to treason. Much of our Constitution is aimed at making sure the military is kept under tight rein – the Second Amendment and the Third Amendment are specific, and the presumption of many of the rights in the others, such as the right to peaceably assemble and the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure is that the military will not be involved as was the Army under the British. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was passed by Congress at the end of “Reconstruction” to end the abuses by the federal government that resulted from the use of troops to police the defeated southern states. It says, in part:
“The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.”
View Comments
The son of a German immigrant, I am an archaeologist by profession, with a BA from Metropolitan State College of Denver, and an MA from Leicester University, in England. Over the years, I have lived and worked all over the country, and traveled in Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. I sincerely believe in the old saying, “America, love it or leave it.”