“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
–Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Statists who wish aristocratic domination over the people often enough interpret the Second Amendment as an historical dead-letter preserving only trivial hunting rights. They nullify the ability of the people to organize as law-enforcing militia. In their view militias (that means armed civilians, organized or not) have been replaced by armed paramilitary police forces and the various state and national military guards.

I don’t rely on the dissembling interpretations of those mendacious crats.

Neither, however, do I take the narrow interpretation of the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, or John Lott, that the Second Amendment is only about guns.

Some advocates are willing to include bladed weapons as arms. To me even that is a far too narrow interpretation.

The Second Amendment says “arms.” The crats want that to be as narrow as possible.

I’m a libertarian who insists that the interpretation be as broad as possible.

Here’s where I stretch out my arms and literally reach for the stars.

The Second Amendment protects anything the human mind can devise to expand and protect human liberty.

Anything.

The rest of this essay will give some examples but — like the Ninth Amendment which reads “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” — is not to be considered exhaustive.

J. Kent Hastings
Libertarian, Second Amendment Professional,
Crypto-expert, Internet maven, HAM

Hard Cryptography

This is the one which already has some legal precedents, since, as late as 1992, cryptography was on the U.S. Munitions List as an Auxiliary Military Equipment.

Since cryptographic codes have already been classified as arms, they’re already protected under the Second Amendment and – by extension – the possession and use of cryptocurrency are protected by the Second Amendment as well.

Motor Vehicles

Are motor vehicles useful in warfare? Without question. Motorized vehicles are ubiquitous in military use – everything from Jeeps to tanks to armored transports. Being used in war has a legal precedent. In the Supreme Court case United States v. Miller (1934) the court wrote, “Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

Motor vehicles are ordinary military equipment. So all are protected for civilian use under the Second Amendment.

Aircraft

It would be difficult to find any kind of aircraft – fixed, movable, or rotary winged – piloted or drone – that is not part of ordinary military equipment. So all are protected for civilian use under the Second Amendment.

The Internet

The Internet was first developed and used by DARPA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense. So the Internet is protected for civilian use under the Second Amendment.

All Other Communication Devices

Does the military use radio? HAM and CB Radio is therefore protected for civilian use under the Second Amendment.

Television? Yep.

Cell phones? Yes, sir.

Chemicals

Can you find things under your kitchen sink that might have military use? Then it’s protected by the Second Amendment.

Is something in your medicine cabinet used by the military? Something growing in your greenhouse, hydroponics garden, aquaponics pond? If it has any military use the Second Amendment protects your possession and use of it.

Biologicals

If any procedure, treatment, or device has ever been used by the military, the Second Amendment protects its civilian use.

Rocketry

Rocketry has been of military use going back as far as the ancient Chinese. Therefore it is of military use and protected by the Second Amendment.

I told you I would reach for the stars. Congratulations, Elon Musk. Falcon Heavy with its cherry-red Tesla Roadster now being driven to the Asteroid Belt by “Star Man” is protected by the Second Amendment.

Communication satellites? Satellite mapping? You bet.

The General Principle

Okay. I could go on forever. Here’s the principle: If anything has military use it is therefore protected for civilian use under the Second Amendment.

And if you want to maintain the principles – or at least the pretense — of law and order, supremacy of civilians over the military demands this principle be recognized in both statutory law and court rulings.

If you don’t, stop pretending you believe in law and order, or liberty, or even such flawed collectivist concepts as democracy.

What is the national debt today? Somewhere around 23 trillion bucks? And if you figure in future obligations — Social Security, Medicare, promises made to veterans for wounds sustained in endless undeclared wars — I hear the debt comes to somewhere around 160 trillion bucks.

President Donald Trump is calling for significant tax cuts to attract foreign investment, give corporations reason to build new factories in America, bring jobs back to America.

Of course I noted in Alongside Night — published in 1979 — that if the government keeps spending more money than it collects in taxes and tariffs the only way to pay for that spending is for the Federal Reserve to make each dollar worth less, a hidden tax.

So anyone who claims that tax cuts “have to be paid for” — while making the obnoxious claim that anything the people say they own has a lien from the goddam guvmint — they are in fact pointing to a basic principle of reality: you can’t get something out of nothing.

What’s a libertarian to do?

How about this? Tell the truth.

Cutting taxes leaves people and financial institutions with more money to spend. That’s money that can be paid to executives to live a more lavish lifestyle, and the Democratic critics do have that right. Just because a corporation has more money on its balance sheet doesn’t mean they’ll use it to make anything or create new jobs. That’s mostly what happened when in 2008 banks were forced to take taxpayer money that was supposed to be used to make consumer loans.

But let’s say that individuals in the “middle class” — the Marxists used to call that the bourgeoisie — take that money and instead of buying new cars, phones, and toys — they use that money in ways the crats don’t like. They start-up unlicensed and unregistered home schools. They use spare rooms and vacation cabins to compete with hotel chains, use their mommy vans to compete with medallion taxis. They sell jams, pies, home-brew beverages to local stores.

And conceal all this entrepreneurial activity financed with the money not being turned over to Uncle Sam from Uncle Sam.

Same for “small businesses” doing home repairs, or plumbing, or rebuilding car transmissions, or rigging your automobile’s computer to lie to the State about the CO2 emissions because CO2 emissions being the cause of climate change is anti-science globaloney.

The Agorist Trading Floor in Alongside Night the Movie

Yes, President Trump. Bring on the tax cuts. The economy that the tax cuts will save is the one that exists in spite of Jekyll Island and Wall Street.

The economy run by Washington crats? The swamp you talk about? That official economy is doomed and I think you’ve already figured that out.

The forests in Canada are owned by the government of Canada. The forests in the United States are in some kind of marketplace, no matter how compromised. Therefore, subsidized Canadian lumber can be sold cheaper than American lumber. This is especially true when it comes to very useful soft wood.

Predictably, Trump is already accused of starting a trade war. Predictably, Reason and CATO will do what they always do, and scream that this is government interference in the marketplace.

I’ve devoted a large part of my life to promoting the Austrian School of Economics. Ludwig von Mises and Hayek are the Plato and Aristotle of that school. Their contention is that the laws of the marketplace are based on an accumulation of personal choices. These operating principles work at any level of economic activity.

That means white market, gray market, black market. Any market.

That means these laws are not the monopoly of agorism or any other radical counter-economic ploy.

The classic texts of the Austrian School are largely about the above ground economy. That means the topic I’m advancing does not require immediate references to Alongside Night or New Libertarian Manifesto. It requires something else, about which more anon.

So, back to my epiphany.

The high-profile defenders of the “free market” are the Reason and Cato Gestapo. They can’t use the word “Trump” for more than a paragraph without also using the word “Tariff.”

After decades of listening to these empty suits, I finally realize they need a new definition of American Capitalism, since the original Austrian School completely failed to anticipate what has happened at the macro level.

Here is the new paradigm for the above-ground economy.

American Capitalism is defined as the purchasing of products from Socialist Countries.

Any attempt to interfere with the purchase of foreign Socialist goods is itself Socialist.

Therefore, the only way to preserve Capitalism is a de facto monopoly of only doing business with Socialists.

Bye bye, Austrian School in the above-ground economy — which is what the actual Austrian economists really cared about.

Later American non-Austrian Austrians are not the point of my epiphany.

As for anyone trying to be a patriotic American and a supporter of free markets at the same time, lots of luck.

–Author/publisher/filmmaker Brad Linaweaver, in a privately circulated email

Brad Linaweaver

Brad Linaweaver understates his case. He’s too moderate.

A free market is by definition a market comprising free traders — traders who own private property and are making unregulated trades with other private property owners.

No State or collective of States is a free trade partner. All States have acquired anything they offer for sale by criminal activity.

Whether it’s by mercantalism, Opium Wars, slave trade, gunboat diplomacy, fiat money, trade cartels, “free trade” treaties, etc., nothing a State or cartel of States does promotes or supports free trade. The only thing a State or cartel of States can do to promote free trade is self-destruct.

The Canadian State is preventing private Canadians from purchasing dairy products from private U.S. sellers. This is restriction of trade to protect Canadian dairy producers and keep their prices up against competition from American dairy producers.

The American State, acting on behalf of American dairy producers being excluded by the Canadian State from selling its products to willing Canadian consumers, is retaliating by imposing tariffs on the sale of soft Canadian wood to American buyers. That this wood being made subject to an American State tariff is owned by the Canadian State itself only makes more pointed that we are not dealing with free trade. It would be true even if the Canadian State was merely using trade barriers to disadvantage American lumber producers by subsidizing its own producers.

The White House press conference today with U.S Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross used dishonest and loaded language. “Dumping” a commodity is false statist language. In private sales it’s called “discounting” and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But there’s no private seller here so the language of “trade war” is invoked because “war” is how States typically interact with each other.

I favor a free market but we’re not discussing here anything to do with one. This is a tactical war move by one State against another State, as much as a troop movement or dispatch of an aircraft carrier.

If self-impoverished socialist Canada thinks it can win any war against the far-more-capitalist United States with Donald Trump in charge it’s not lumber they’ve been smoking.

Donald Trump is a capitalist who, like Brad, favors free trade but is not uncomfortable with using the superior position of the Unites States if trade barriers disadvantage those Americans he’s pledged to place First.

Those libertarians who don’t agree with Brad on that are either lying or stupid.

No, wait. This is written also for the unAmerican.

What happens at the polls on November 8, 2016 in the U.S. presidential election simply does not matter.

It’s not unimportant because balloting itself will be tampered with, which is how the media spin it when Donald Trump says the election is rigged.

Uh-uh. The fix is in for the popular voting because both the major political parties and the free press necessary for anything approaching “honest” elections have been corrupted, not allowing for a fair process — for example, not including Libertarian Gary Johnson, a candidate on all 50 state ballots, in the crucial televised debates.

Additionally, none of the cultural traditions that kept debates focused on policy issues exist anymore.

At this moment the media are focused on making the October 18, 2016 final presidential debate mostly about Donald Trump’s sex life.

The major media ignore all the Wikileaks documents from Hillary Clinton and her supporters, just as the Obama/Lynch Justice Department earlier directed the FBI to do.

The Clinton campaign — in coordination with major media — accuse Donald Trump of being paranoid when he talks about their obvious coordination while, simultaneously, Hillary and her supporters talking about Trump conspiring with Putin sound like Robert Welch of the John Birch Society accusing President Dwight Eisenhower of being a Russian stooge.

In a coordinated attack designed to bury Hillary-damaging Wikileaks the major media are obsessing over the endless Clinton-supporters claiming Trump molested them. Liberal/feminist attorney Gloria Allred getting involved is a clear indicator of the set-up.

Then consider the episode of NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 18, Episode 6: “Rape Interrupted,” scheduled to air Nov 2, 2016 — six days before the election. Here’s IMDb’s description of “Rape Interrupted”: “A politician’s campaign is jeopardized when several women come forward with damaging accusations.” Such an episode had to be scripted months ago. NBC, the network which aired The Apprentice series and was the employer of Billy Bush, certaintly knew about the Access Hollywood tape for a very long time.

Update/Correction October 26, 2016: The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode I referenced is “Unstoppable” and was originally scheduled to play tonight, two weeks before the November 8th election; as of this writing it has been re-scheduled to play November 16, 2016. — JNS

The coordinated media-smear strategy was simple.

Step One was release of the illegally made Access Hollywood tape. Unless the recording was made with all parties’ explicit consent the taping was illegal under California law. On this private recording Donald Trump bragged to Billy Bush about what a stud The Donald thought he was, even as Trump told Bush a story about a married woman who said no and whom Trump did not have sex with but whom Trump says he ended up taking furniture shopping.

Step Two was when Anderson Cooper relentlessly asked Trump in Debate 2 — interrupting Trump three times to force an answer — if any of the braggadocio on the tape was true. Cooper and his handlers had to know Trump would have no choice but to deny committing anything that could be spun as sexual assaults.

Then in Step Three major media unleashed what the Clintons charmingly called “bimbo eruptions” when it was about Bill Clinton — female accusers.

Nazi Germany’s propaganda master Joseph Goebbels would have been more subtle.

But here’s the ultimate reason the November 8, 2016 election doesn’t really matter.

The American people do not elect the President of the United States the way they elect United States senators, federal, state, and local representatives, governors, mayors, sheriffs, and dog catchers.

The real and only binding presidential election in 2016 takes place on December 19th when the Electoral College votes.

The 538 Electors chosen by voters to cast presidential and vice-presidential ballots in the Electoral College have zero legal obligation to vote for the candidate they’re theoretically pledged to vote for. There is no penalty if they don’t.

If somehow, despite the media’s best efforts, Trump’s November 8th popular vote is like the surprise upset of Great Britain’s Brexit vote and despite media-commissioned polling is greater than Hillary Clinton’s numbers, then changing the Electoral College electors’ vote will be trumpeted as necessary by all major media.

If the electors selected don’t give Hillary Clinton the 270 pledged votes she needs to win I have zero doubt that the Democratic/ liberal/ progressive/ Clintonista/ left would encourage electors pledged to other candidates to come over to them.

Another long-standing American political tradition will be dead.

Republican Elector Roger MacBride taught us the freedom of the Elector in 1972 when he broke his pledge to vote for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, instead casting his electoral ballot for Libertarians John Hospers and Tonie Nathan.

2012 Electoral College Votes by State

The media is currently so focused on the November 8 balloting they’ve forgotten the popular vote is not how the United States elects its president and vice president.

The Electors of the Electoral College pick the president.

Just because electors have traditionally voted as they have promised in the past means absolutely nothing in the unprecedented presidential election of 2016.

Every instinct tells me that the only people who have to be convinced of anything this time are the electors.

And nobody has even polled them.

Note: After reading the above several correspondents in email and on Facebook have pointed me to articles discussing 34 states that “bind” electors and impose legal penalties (usually fines maxing out at $1000) for “faithless electors.”

First, most legal scholars conclude such laws are unconstitutional and unenforceable, Second, not a felony. Those states usually max out with a $1000 fine — and withdrawing money prematurely from a CD or prematurely switching to an alternate satellite TV or cell phone company usually has the new company picking up the penalty. Out of the 538 electors only several might have to go against their state law and with a 4-4 Supreme Court it’s all politics anyway.

“Indeed, when it comes down to it, electors are ultimately free to vote for whom they personally prefer, despite the general public’s desire.” — Fair Vote — States that Bind Electors

As I wrote in response to an email earlier today:

Party pledges of supporting the party’s nominee were obtained from all primary candidates including Jeb Bush and John Kasich, both of whom reneged on supporting nominee Donald Trump with no party penalty. Such party pledges from electors are likewise meaningless and unenforceable beyond an elector perhaps not being selected again and that’s a big, “So what?”

Fines likewise would be paid by the team acquiring the elector’s vote, just like a new cell phone company offers to pay the remainder of your contract to your old cell phone company if you switch.

Nullification of a “faithless elector’s” vote? That will be decided by a 4-4 Supreme Court — that is, left undecided and the vote left intact.

Our fifth-grade teacher, Miss Masterson, stepped out of the classroom for a few minutes and we were instructed to remain at our desks. When she returned a pile of books had been pushed off a table at the front of the room onto the floor. Miss Masterson asked the class who did it. The entire class pointed at me, sitting at my desk near the back of the classroom.

I was sent to the office of Principal Paul Wadleigh. For close to an hour Mr. Wadleigh grilled me to get me to confess that I had gone to the front of the classroom and pushed the books onto the floor. I denied it, but with an entire class as witnesses against me, why should he believe me?

Why should the class accuse me if it wasn’t true? I didn’t know.

I didn’t know about anti-Semitism from a classroom full of Protestants and Catholics when I was the only Jewish student in the class, the only student not reciting the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of class.

I knew I was frequently bullied and beat up after school but didn’t know it was because I displayed a vocabulary in class beyond any of the other students. (Two years later the entire Natick K-12 student body was tested for reading level and I had the highest score in the entire system.)

So I was grilled. “Confess!” and I could go back to class and nothing more would be said about it — no punishment.

I would not admit to doing something I had not done and stubbornly pled innocent despite the principal’s plea-bargain offer.

Finally, Principal Wadleigh relented and sent me back to class.

A family member who’s a supporter of Hillary Clinton suggested to me that the reason I defend Donald Trump against his detractors is that I have a soft spot for the underdog. I don’t deny it because the underdogs I defend are the victims of mass hysteria driven by mass media.

I wrote an entire book — The Frame of the Century? — defending one such underdog, O.J. Simpson, who the entire mass madia attacked as a murderer, despite the only evidence and testimony against him in court indicating that he might have been at the crime scene. Could Nicole have called him there with the murderer’s knife at her throat — the murderer intending to use O.J. as his alibi — and Simpson arrived to walk into Nicole’s blood with Nicole already dying or dead? Could Ronald Goldman have seen O.J. standing over Nicole’s body, attacked him, and O.J. picked up the murder knife, stabbing at Ronald Goldman in self-defense?

It could explain all the blood evidence. But what I just wrote is a fictional construct as much as Marcia Clark’s prosecution theory, and just as open to interpretation and skepticism.

I have never seen a shred of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that O.J. Simpson had a motive to kill his ex-wife. What I just wrote is not even one of the half-dozen equally-valid alternate scenarios I put in my book that explain the evidence presented against O.J. Simpson in both a criminal and civil trial.

Even before the Simpson trial we have had other media-frenzy cases which turned out to be bogus. Among the most infamous are the McMartin pre-school trial prosecuted by Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner. There were other such trials in Florida and Massachusetts. They all used testimony from children led into making up stories — the same prosecution methods used on adults to generate witness testimony for the actual Salem witch trials.

After the Simpson trials we have the Duke lacross case where student athletes were accused of rape and convicted in the mass media — only to have it come out that the accuser was a serial liar. This is the only such case I can think of where the prosecutor, himself, ended up fired, disbarred, and even going to jail — for one day.

President Bill Clinton was brought up on charges of impeachment — and cleared in a Senate trial — for perjury he committed while denying various sex acts — and his accusers have even accused Clinton of rape — a charge on which he has never been arraigned or tried.

Anita Hill was brought in by opponents of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas to accuse now Justice Thomas of serial sexual harrassment. Today whether you believe Hill or Thomas depends entirely not on indisputable facts but on political leanings.

So we get to 2016 Republican candidate Donald J. Trump, bragging to Billy Bush of being sexually aggressive (in Trump’s own words ending not in a sexual conquest but in furniture shopping), and now what the Clintonistas referred to as a “bimbo eruption” is bringing forth accusers, many years later, accusing the current Republican candidate of unwanted sexual assaults.

As I write this there are 27 days until the populist presidential balloting. The actual presidential electors selected on November 8, 2016, vote on December 12, 2016 and are legally unbound to vote for a candidate; they can elect whom they wish.

For either election there is no time to investigate these brand-new charges against candidate Donald Trump and find out whether there are any truth to these women’s allegations or alternatively their fantastic political constructs.

What we do know is that major media made up almost entirely of liberals, progressives, and radical leftists who find Donald J. Trump poisonous to their agendas will obsess on these charges to the exclusion of any discussion of policy debates and charges against their own preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, defender of Bill Clinton.

I can only hope that — unlike all the other times — the witch hunt is exposed and foiled before it’s too late to matter.

I’m going to widen the context of Hillary Clinton’s question to the November presidential election, itself.

“What difference at this point does it make?” can well be applied to asking whether anyone elected President of the United States can do a thing about rescuing an economy in which the federal government’s accumulated national debt, continuing payments of legal entitlements such as Medicare, Social Security, and Veterans’ benefits, and treaty commitments are far beyond what the base of American taxpayers can service.

When there is no point on a Laffer Curve of Taxation where incoming taxes are equal to paying the interest on the national debt, much less future commitments of government spending, “what difference at this point does it make?” can be applied to the very question of who will sit in the Oval Office beginning January 20, 2017.

Government by its nature is parasitic on the private economic sector where goods and services are traded. Government makes nothing nor offers any benefit not paid for by taking wealth from people working and making things in the private economic sector. Government can spend nothing without removing it from the private economic sector, whether that taking is by taxes, fees, or the particularly pernicious method of expanding its fiat money or credit such that anyone calculating their holdings figured in that fiat money has their wealth transferred to the government by the stealthy theft of monetary devaluation.

Of course I’m being if not outright dishonest, then at least disingenuous — because, of course, there is indeed something the President of the United States could do to pay for things the American taxpayer can not afford.

The President, as Commander in Chief, can use the U.S. military, or at least use its muscular threats, to plunder foreign wealth and give it to Americans.

Even that, however, has its limits. Every Ponzi scheme has a tipping point where the availability of new suckers is less than the requirement of new suckers to maintain the cash flow needed to keep the scheme afloat.

We can observe that the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency demonstrates that inevitable point of collapse has not yet arrived. What we can not readily observe is how close we are to a tipping point when foreigners recognize their victimhood and — by switching to a reserve currency other than the U.S. dollar — decline to be further victimized.

It’s an open question in my mind whether there could possibly be an “economic miracle” to change this equation. That’s historical language for such a sudden creation of new wealth that it dwarfs the existing accumulated debt and demands for future government income to pay for future commitments. Economic history of post-World-War-II Germany suggests that economic freedom can produce gobs of new wealth quickly.

Before that, the relative economic freedom of the Industrial Revolution also suggests such a possibility.

A technological breakthrough such as anti-gravity or “warp drive” — enabling cheap and robust space industrialization — could theoretically create such an economic “miracle” as access to solar energy and minerals outside the earth’s atmosphere provides a new frontier to plunder — this time without natives needing to be displaced.

But that’s why it’s called a miracle. You can’t count on it. And if such a miracle happens, it’s highly unlikely anyone sitting in the Oval Office will have done anything to let it happen.

My fellow Americans, the hope for your future well-being is to be found in that part of the social order out of reach of the politicians.

So if you feel compelled to vote, vote for the presidential candidate most likely to be an incompetent blowhard.

I have no witnesses I know of to what I’m about to relate, so you can believe me or not.

I once had a conversation at a science-fiction convention with Isaac Asimov, whom I knew advocated a one-world government. Isaac knew I was a libertarian science-fiction writer.

I asked Dr. Asimov, “If you can’t get a one-world government, would you settle for a world anarchy?”

Dr. Asimov replied, “Yes.”

UK Brexit Ballot

I write this right after the British people in national referendum voted to extract the UK from its decades-long immersion in the European Union. I suspect when Britain joined the EU they saw the advantages to border-irrelevant trade, travel, and freedom of migration with European countries. Instead what they got was an overriding bureaucracy and a mass influx of Muslims to a country that still has an established Christian Church and a Christian monarchy.

I’m a libertarian. I’m entirely for doing away with national borders that restrict the free movement of people and trade goods. But I understand entirely why the British people thought the European Union tyrannical. My own country came to that same conclusion in 1776 regarding a British monarch and parliament.

Today when governments make trade agreements it’s called “free trade.” It isn’t free trade. It’s an expansion of mercantilism, by which one national power historically used troops and warships to install economic monopolies on other nations.

The European Union is a trade cartel and an aggressive multinational bureaucracy with a fiat currency not backed by any real commodity.

In theory I favor knocking down barriers to free migration and free trade. But I also favor the principle of eliminating, weakening, and decentralizing statist power to whatever extent possible.

In a politicized world that is not free — and in which there are vast affiliations of nationalists, ethnic groups, and religious identities — there are often nothing but conundrums for people like me who just want more freedom for as many people as possible.

Which is why I see the British exit from the European Union as a good thing. I see it as decentralization of power.

Whether the British people use that decentralization of power to submit to a more-localized oppression, or to institute a new era of real free trade and cultural values based on their historic expansion of enlightenment-based human rights, is something I will just have to wait and see.

I favor world freedom, which I believe comes about by recognizing, as did a universalist document written in 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, 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 them 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.
–The Declaration of Independence

My British friends, you have just voted to be American. Facing toward the future, I hope you adopt the above principles better than we Americans have.

Full text of the petition to President Barack Obama, Senator Rand Paul, and Representative Justin Amash: