On Thomas Jefferson, Revolution and the Biometric ID Card

by Todd Brendan Fahey

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
--Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776.

05/09/03: This is a "line-in-the-sand" issue: The Washington Post is claiming that Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration have teamed up with the so-called G-8 nations, toward establishing biometrics-based passports within the next 5 years: fingerprints, retinal-scans, barcode, on every passport.

Not having one will guarantee that you're grounded within the confines of the U.S. (cannot board a plane or ship for the purpose of traveling outside of the United States); and even within the U.S., I'd assume that if the biometric passport is agreed to by Congress, a biometric-based drivers' license or Federal I.D. card would be part and parcel of the action.

In the midst of this madness, President Bush and Colin Powell and various Globalist interests continue to push for "amnesty" of illegal aliens in the United States, in the face of Article IV of the Constitution, which guarantees that every state retains the right to repel against "foreign invasion."

Is such enough to justify Revolution? Is it better to take out one or two or twenty Federal agents over this, than to submit to Bael?

Barring firearms confiscation, a biometrics-based ID card seems to me to be the most clear abrogation of the Constitution that could be perforced by FedGov. I can't imagine how anyone could stand for this and not be willing to simply give up/bend over/become a good little slave...

Our foundation document, in the 4th amendment--a portion of the Bill of Rights, which guarantees us the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"--guarantees to us, further: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
(4th amendment, U.S. Constitution)

Clearly, the forced seizure of ones retinal imprint and fingerprints, absent a writ of seizure based upon the oath or affirmation of another, testifying to criminal wrongdoing, is a clear and patent violation of the Constitution. There is simply no way to justify forcing an American citizen to give over his/her retinal pattern or fingerprints without declaring the Constitution null and void.

We The People--the inheritors of the spirit of Colonial separatists, of Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Henry--have rebelled for far less than that of forcible seizure of retinal imprints and fingerprints. Indeed, the causes perforcing Jefferson's Declaration of Independence pale in comparison.

In 1775, Britain's George Grenville--Leader of the House of Commons and a member of the Cabinet--in order to raise revenue in the fighting of the Seven Years War against France, devised to place in force the Stamp Act, which required of the American colonists to pay taxes on all manner of transactions requiring a government stamp: documents used in court, harbors, land transactions, and other legal performances. The colonists rebelled wholeheartedly against the Stamp Act (in addition to the Sugar Act, which placed a tax on that commodity).

The Assemblies of most of the colonies refused King George's and Parliament's authority to tax the colonists in this manner, and colony-wide boycotts were held against British goods, forcing the withdrawal of the Stamp Act.

Imagine today's American sheeple rebelling against the sum-total of its nation's (UK) government for taxes amounting to perhaps .005% of today's rate of taxation?

With the 16th amendment (the graduated, or "progressive" Federal Income Tax--itself the 2nd-plank of Marx/Engels' Communist Manifesto)--an American wage-earner pays upwards of 34% of his income. Add to that, state, local, county taxes; taxes on telecommunications (telephone service); in most states, sales tax on goods purchased; property taxes for home-owners; and, via the Social Security Act, 7 1/2% of ones wages earned, which is matched at an additional 7 1/2% on the part of ones employer (and which, in effect, is also factored into wages paid to the employee), and you'll find that the average hard-working American is paying over 50% of his income to various governmental interests.

And yet we do not rebel.

We have become a compliant people--utterly subservient to Government. Those acts which prompted the colonists to take up arms against their oppressors seem not to provoke in us anything other than a surly mood on April 15th of each year, when Federal taxes must be submitted.

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery."
--Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. (*) ME 1:193, Papers 1:125

What has become of us? Are you that ungrateful, and compliant, fat and complacent, that you're willing to ignore the steady, noose-like actions of our nation's government? Did our colonial leaders act in vain?

Via Roe v. Wade, we (the unborn) are already denied the privilege of life. With random "check-point" traffic stops, mandatory drug testing in many industries, the consistent and egregiously excessive taxation, and the forcible implementation of a Social Security number and the Government's theft of earnings subsequent to such an invasion, we are already deprived of the right to liberty and--depending on ones definition and economic station in life--the pursuit of happiness.

Are you now willing to sit in front of a battery of machines, while Government scans your retinaes, takes your fingerprints, implementing the data into a world-wide computer network, simply so that you have the "privilege" of boarding an airplane, ship, bus or train?

"As revolutionary instruments (when nothing but revolution will cure the evils of the State) [secret societies] are necessary and indispensable, and the right to use them is inalienable by the people."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1803.

Thomas Jefferson, per his own words, would not have sat for this. Nor would have Patrick Henry, whose cry of "give me liberty or give me death!" resounded throughout the colonies and led to the American Revolution, to which we owe our current freedoms.

The Berlin Wall has fallen; the Romanian people dragged President Ceaucescu and his wife into a public square and riddled them with bullets, and laughed for days at the putrefaction, and rightly so. Even Putin's suspect Russia has adopted a fair flat-taxation system, of roughly 13% across-the-board. Much of the world admires the Founders' accomplishments, and yet We The Sheeple cower.

Did Thomas Jefferson waste his time?

What say you all? ***

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Fahey, a strategic writer stationed in South Korea, has served as aide to Central Intelligence Agency agent Theodore L. "Ted" Humes, Division of Slavic Languages, and to the late-Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief Lt. General Daniel O. Graham; to former Arizona Governor Evan Mecham (R-AZ), former Congressman John Conlan (R-AZ) and others.