http://serfcity.wordpress.com/…

Barack Obama’s disturbing proposal for ”universal voluntary public service” (as Michael Kinsley pointed out, it can either be universal or voluntary, but not both) just got a lot more traction with the selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.  J.D. Tuccille observes that Emanuel is a long-time proponent of compulsory national service. Emanuel is co-author of the 2006 book The Plan, which includes the following:

It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. …

Here’s how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They’ll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we’re hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities’ most pressing needs.

Tuccille also notes that Emanuel dismisses the whiners who “will squeal about individual freedom.” (That would be us.) It sounds universal all right, but not exactly voluntary.

You can find my following of Service Nation and the bureaucrats push to make the State the be all end all here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Starting next year, there will be four new pennies to collect, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The obverse (or heads) part of the coin will stay the same, showing the 16th president facing to the right.

But the reverse (tails) part of the coin will show different times in the life of Lincoln, who is widely considered to be one of the country’s greatest leaders for freeing the slaves and saving the Union during the Civil War.

The designs for the new pennies were shown for the first time yesterday near the Lincoln Memorial.

The first new penny will be available Feb. 12, Lincoln’s 200th birthday. It will show a log cabin to honor his birth and childhood in Kentucky.

The others will show his life as a young man in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois and his presidential years in Washington (when the U.S. Capitol was being built).

The other side of the penny will continue to show the likeness of Lincoln designed by Victor David Brennan. It was introduced on the Lincoln penny 100 years ago.

A Lincoln commemorative silver dollar also will be issued next year.

Abraham Lincoln did not really free the slaves. The 13th Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation said “all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Only those slaves captured by the North by that point were set free. Maryland and Delaware were both slave states and not on of the supposed rebel states. While not recognized by any other government the Confederate States of America was a separate nation with it’s own government defined by their own (though heavily borrowed from the USA) constitution. Therefore from their perspective the Emancipation Proclamation meant as much as if it had come from England. Lincoln also said this of the Corwin Amendment, “[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” which read:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

As for saving the Union… a highly questionable action. Even if ruled unconstitutional there is plenty of evidence that such a claim is incorrect from a legal standpoint. For example: When ratifying the new constitution, Virginia (1788), New York (1788), and Rhode Island (1790) included clauses indicating they were free to leave the new federal government confederation should it become oppressive. It seems obvious that they would not have joined if they believed it was a one way trip. From a moral standpoint its reprehensible. The Declaration of Independence clearly says:

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.

Lincoln was in no way a great leader but a statist who put his beliefs in keeping together a union of people who did not wish to be under the same government umbrella above the lives of over 600,000 individuals.

For more information read Thomas DiLorenzo’s books Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Lincoln. Many complain his views are one sided but given the works written in excess of Lincoln’s greatness I think that’s excusable. You can also find a decent interview with DiLorenzo on CSPAN’s Q&A at Google video.

http://www.thestar.com/…

The first American war resister deported from Canada – where he had fled after refusing to be deployed to Iraq – was sentenced to 15 months in jail yesterday at a court martial hearing in Colorado.

Pte. Robin Long, 25, of Boise, Idaho, was also given a dishonourable discharge after pleading guilty to charges of desertion.

The sentence was the longest any convicted army deserter had received since the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war, said retired U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright, a former diplomat who resigned from her post out of protest at the war’s outset.

Wright testified against the legality of the Iraq war on Long’s behalf.

Of the thousands of soldiers sentenced for desertion or going AWOL – and the estimated two dozen tried for protesting the war – only former army sergeant Kevin Benderman received an equal sentence in 2005.

About two-dozen anti-war supporters gathered around the courthouse at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo., yesterday afternoon as a military judge handed down Long’s sentence.

Though initially sentenced to 30 months in prison, that time was reduced to the 15-month maximum military prosecutors had agreed on when arranging a plea deal last week.

Long, 25, came to Canada in 2005 to flee a scheduled deployment to Iraq. While here, he was briefly engaged to an Ontario woman – with whom he had a child last year – before he moved to British Columbia, supporters have said.

He was deported and taken into the custody of the U.S. Army last month following a series of failed attempts to gain refugee status or permanent residency in Canada.

Late last week, Long’s lawyers reached an agreement with prosecutors that would see him plead guilty on charges of desertion with the intent to stay away permanently.

In return, prosecutors agreed not to move forward on the most serious charges of desertion with the intent to shirk hazardous duty.

Standing calmly and waiting for his sentence after three hours of testimony at yesterday’s hearing, Long appeared stoic and ready to serve his time in a military jail, supporters said.

“He was very calm and very measured,” said Wright. “He fully anticipated that he would be serving the entire 15 months.”

The dishonourable discharge he received could also go down as a felony offence and could restrict his future right to vote or carry a firearm, his lawyer said.

“(He) would pretty much become a second-class citizen,” his Oklahoma-based civilian lawyer, James M. Branum, told the Star earlier this week.

Like many of the other roughly 200 other American war resisters currently living in Canada, Long has said he opposed the conflict in Iraq on legal and moral grounds.

13th Amendment of the United States Constitution:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Unlike property, a man’s will is inalienable and therefore intransferable. Should a contract provide for payments upfront then breaking the contract would constitute theft which the person breaking the contract and therefore commiting the theft would be expected to pay back. However, that person would still be free to exit without the threat of violence against them.

Murray Rothbard covers this in better detail in The Ethics of Liberty.

http://nationalserviceact.org/10.html

I had noticed this the other day but thought I just hadn’t paid close enough attention to it originally. xyz this morning independently noticed new sections on their FAQ. It appears to have been updated the 1st or there abouts:

What if I don’t want to do any service?

This is a superb question.

Hopefully, enough people will volunteer to serve so that individuals not interested in National Service can be accommodated. How many people is enough? That’s tough to say. How many more good teachers and tutors do we need to make American education globally competitive again? The Iraq War may have been a war of choice but the next war may not be. What happens if the volunteer force isn’t big enough? If global climate change is what some scientists say it is, how many Americans need to be involved in conservation and disaster relief? How much time should you devote to your community so it’s the type of place your family is happy to live in?

There is a simple choice here. We can do these things or we can pay someone else to do it for us (which typically means higher taxes and putting more trust in bureaucracies). And don’t be surprised if you don’t like the results when you relinquish your opportunity to make a difference to someone or something else.

Some people feel affronted by the idea of National Service because they view it as surrendering to government. Obviously, we don’t agree. We see it as average citizens taking back their civil institutions and actualizing government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” At present, we’re having a difficult time keeping Americans (particularly young people) interested in and focused on the affairs of local, state, and federal government. This inattention has resulted in many abuses in the last few years. Our solution is to get more Americans involved via National Service (more ‘skin in the game’ if you will). Implied in this idea is a lack of faith that voting alone provides adequate accountability, responsiveness, and results. After all, what is casting a vote compared to doing?

All that being said, if you don’t want to serve then we hope you understand that American democracy will be poorer and less effective without the direct participation of your talent, intellect, and abilities.

Is mandatory National Service constitutional?

Yes.

The United States has practiced several forms of mandatory National Service throughout its history. The Militia Act of 1792 and the Selective Service System (a.k.a. the Draft) are the two most referenced examples. Probably the most commonly experienced form of mandatory service is jury duty. Also, it can be argued that paying taxes is a form of mandatory National Service.

One can reference dozens of US Supreme Court Cases that weighed individual rights versus civic obligations. The most prominent case on this matter is Butler v. Perry (1916). In this instance the Court ruled that the 13th Amendment does not apply to mandatory national service. For further information on the legal precedence of National Service click HERE.

So I checked Google Cache and found that as of June 24th, 2008 12:41:40 GMT the above two sections were not on the site. I’ve uploaded a snapshot from Google Cache here in case Google updates.

Notice they don’t answer the first question and the second question makes the assumption that just because something is constitutional it’s OK. It also assumes that just because the US Supreme Court says it’s constitutional it is. While in the legal system that may be true the 13th Amendment seems pretty clear to me.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

If I must participate in some service against my will it seems to me to be by definition involuntary servitude/slavery. The 13th Amendment forbids that. I don’t care what some people in black dresses say. Conscription is both unconstitutional in that it violates the 13th Amendment and it goes against the concept that government is created at the consent of the governed to protect their rights. If the 13th isn’t enough you can take a look at the 5th and 14th too.

The reason these additions are noteworthy is that xyz had emailed them directly requesting what would occur if an individual refused to serve. She has yet to receive a personal reply but the FAQ as we have seen has been updated with a poor answer.

If there is no punishment for failing to participate in the “mandatory service” then it’s not mandatory just like “mandatory” participating in the census is in fact not.

http://jermainejustice.baywords.com/…

A few days ago I heard some shocking news of how the company I currently work for, Target, is involved in sponsoring the Service Nation organization. At a glance, Service Nation seems like a wonderful place for volunteers to get more active in bureaucrat positions. I have no idea why anyone would want to become a bureaucrat, (wouldn’t that mean more money from tax victims needed to pay them?) but whatever, right? I can see why some people wouldn’t see a problem with that. Help people in need… Actually, it get’s worse.

So as a Target “team member” (which is their brand term for employee) I am planning in the coming weeks to do a little protest/boycott experimentation, possibly followed up with my resignation from the company. Be sure to check out my stories, videos, and information on my website: jermainejustice.com as well as my BayWords blog, my YouTube channel, and my calls into the nationally syndicated and radio-streamed show/podcast Free Talk Live (freetalklive.com).

Let it be known that I realize Target may not have fully realized and been aware that they were supporting a draft all this time. I can imagine they have been told it’s a great way to bring volunteers into the world, and Target is very community based and loves that stuff. My objective is to make it clear to the people of Target and it’s customers that this could be something worse.

Call it a draft, call it Mandatory National Service, call it Involuntary Servitude. It all sounds rotten to me.

He’s scheduled to be on Free Talk Live tomorrow night (Saturday, August 2nd) at the start of the show.

Here is a higher resolution version of what I posted here.

Fascist, FDR worshipers use a propaganda symbol of his reign to stir more fascism. Couldn’t they be more imaginative? Then again… they are FDR worshiping fascists.