Basic Jurisdictional Principles
A Theological Inventory of American Jurisprudence
 
Amendment I: The Emperor’s "Parade of Horribles"
 
"Marxian socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion – how a
doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an
influence over the minds of men and, through them, the events of history." 1

"I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for
attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it
is in many ways extremely objectionable." 2
 

Amendment I (cont’d):

The Emperor’s "parade of horribles":

After the series of events starting with Employment Division v. Smith, leading to the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments, and culminating in the Boerne and UDV decisions, the status of religion in America is more precarious than ever. It’s true that the general government’s exemptions from controlled substance laws, for the Native American Church and the UDV, are now mandatory in all the States, and are thereby rare signs of sanity in the general government. The RFRA still applies at the general level, but through Boerne, the Court has essentially abandoned free exercise incorporation to the States. This has created a vacuum that is now being filled by the UN. The Court has essentially turned the States, counties, and cities over to UN Agenda 2030. Because those entities lack leadership from anywhere else, these de facto municipal entities are inherently prone to following the UN’s leadership. Some States have adopted RFRA-like legislation, which means that they mandate the State judiciaries to use the compelling interest test to create free-exercise based exemptions to neutral, generally applicable laws wherever the courts deem it appropriate. But that trend towards religious liberty is in stiff competition with the UN’s agenda. During the 2020 coronavirus "pandemic", it’s become clear that according to most of the obvious signs, the UN is winning. Because the judiciary doesn’t even have a reliable definition of "religion", it’s no surprise that the traditional system’s lack of ideological rigor is succumbing to the UN’s vigorous use of scientism. Scientism is polluted, politicized science. It’s being foisted on people who lack the discernment to recognize the difference between true science and politicized science.

There is something deeply wrong with what’s going on in regards to religion in America in 2020. The supreme Court’s religion-clause jurisprudence is still stuck at a stage where it must decide whether to grant religion-clause exemptions to generally applicable laws, while it is failing to recognize that scientism is a religion that is driving the country into ruin by pretending to not be a religion. This is like fiddling while Rome burns, like straining gnats while swallowing camels, like not heeding the truck that’s aimed at smashing you because you’re too busy with your smart phone. Pick your metaphor.

There is something deeply wrong with this whole process of exemption-creation, but there’s something much more profoundly wrong with the failure of the supreme Court, the general government, and the State and local governments, to take a holistic and rigorous approach to human law. The core of the problem manifests as bad laws. The bad laws are the fruit of governmental ignorance about basic jurisdictional principles. The bad laws are the by-product of secular governments’ belief, and actions based on its belief, that it’s OK for secular governments to exercise religious police powers. That’s not OK!

Since Boerne, the supreme Court has repeatedly enforced not only its constricted conception of free exercise, but also its anemic view of 14th Amendment §1 (i)privileges and immunities, (ii)due process, and (iii)equal protection. It has thereby rejected and overridden Congress’s sometimes broader view of these rights. The supreme Court’s posture undermines not only these constitutional rights, but also these unalienable Rights, and in so doing, it undermines the well being of the republic. Every human being has an unalienable Right to practice whatever religion they choose (assuming that it doesn’t condone bloodshed), and they also have an unalienable Right to be free from tyranny. Free exercise is a right that MUST be available not only to dominant, majoritarian religions, but also to minority religions, American Indians, and people who claim to be secular. As the UN and the cabal of globalists use their special religion to take over the world, every person who values his/her personal religion and his/her unalienable Rights must recognize that the globalists’ de facto attempt at establishing their special religion is an attempt at repudiating everyone else’s religion.

To conclude our examination of the present religion clause predicament, we’ll go through a short exercise to share our thoughts about how to simultaneously gain free exercise and avoid the parade of horribles, 3 and thereby advance the cause of establishing the secular religion and the natural rights polity. We’ll look at each of the "horribles" mentioned by Justice Scalia in Smith. We’ll examine each of these "horribles" to answer two overriding questions: (i)What should existing governments do to remedy the current predicament? (ii)What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? According to Scalia and cohort in Smith, "The rule respondents favor [(compelling interest test)] would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind – ranging from compulsory military service . . . , to the payment of taxes . . . ; to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws . . . , compulsory vaccination laws . . . , drug laws . . . , and traffic laws . . . ; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws . . . , child labor laws . . . , animal cruelty laws . . . , environmental protection laws . . . , and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races . . . ." (494 U.S. 872, Scalia’s Part II-B) Scalia and company believed that this "parade" was horrible because use of strict scrutiny and the compelling interest test would allow religion-clause exemptions from generally applicable laws of almost every conceivable kind. In contrast to this, the natural rights polity would not allow such exemptions. It would not allow such exemptions because it would not allow the promulgation of bad laws that inherently demand such exemptions. The only laws that can be lawfully promulgated by a secular social compact are those that ban bloodshed. In contrast, a religious social compact can lawfully promulgate any kind of law its parties want, as long as the law doesn’t call for bloodshed. Secular social compacts are by definition practitioners of the secular religion, and nothing more. Scalia’s "horribles" looked horrible to him because these laws look necessary, and the prospect of exemptions from these laws looks horrible to anyone who believes they are necessary. But the metaconstitution holds that they can be lawfully necessary only to the extent that they conform to the jurisdictional standards of the natural rights polity.

(i) Compulsory Military Service:

According to our reading of Scripture, every human being has a moral and human law obligation to avoid perpetrating bloodshed, and simultaneously a moral obligation to execute justice against people who DO perpetrate bloodshed. But not all people are qualified to execute such justice because they might be too weak, too sick, too old, too young, too stupid, or too much of any number of other things. They also might simply not want to. So many people won’t execute such justice because they lack capacity or refuse to do so. So since the beginning of civilization, societies have found people with capacity and calling to work in this field of maintaining justice. In the hermeneutical prologue, we call the people who work in this field the social compact’s jural society and ecclesiastical society, where the jural society addresses bloodshed arising ex delicto, and the ecclesiastical society addresses bloodshed arising ex contractu. Historically, citizens of any given jurisdictionally dysfunctional social compact, who have not been party to the jural society or the ecclesiastical society, have in effect paid taxes to that social compact’s jural society and ecclesiastical society, and have thereby relieved their moral obligation to execute justice in this by-proxy manner. But historically, there have also been other ways to satisfy the moral obligation, like military service.

Military service is one lawful way to execute justice against perpetrators of bloodshed. The difference between police who work to execute justice against bloodshed, and military people who execute justice against bloodshed, is that the military branch of the jural society deals with large, usually foreign, groups of people, who as a nation or group are perpetrating bloodshed on a massive scale. In contrast to this, police usually deal with smaller groups and individuals who are usually within the geographical jurisdiction of the social compact.

There are at least two big problems with compulsory military service: (a)Nations don’t always, even usually don’t, distinguish military actions that are responses to bloodshed from military actions that are rationalized in some other manner. Military actions that are responses to bloodshed are perfectly justified, as long as excessive force is avoided and as long as a thorough cost-benefit analysis is done before the action – where such cost-benefit analysis shows the action to be relatively beneficial. But numerous military actions executed by the general government in American history have not conformed to these criteria. So numerous military actions have NOT been justified, and have not been "just wars". Military actions that are not justified as responses to bloodshed, and through thorough cost-benefit analysis, are usually perpetrations of bloodshed by our nation against some other nation. Under such government-sponsored bloodshed, compulsory military service essentially forces the inductee to perpetrate bloodshed against other people. (b)The second major thing wrong with compulsory military service is that it coerces people into a vocation. It is an act of coercing someone into a pretended contract. All people are morally obligated to execute justice against bloodshed, which may entail a moral obligation to pay taxes. But this moral obligation doesn’t translate into a human-law obligation except through participation in a cognitive contract. 4 The same situation exists in regard to military service. All people are morally obligated to participate on the just side of a "just war". But that moral obligation doesn’t translate into a human-law obligation except through participation in a cognitive contract. So all people are NOT obligated to military service. All people may be morally obligated to fight on the just side in a "just war", but people have human-law obligations to do so only through their prior consent to participation in a cognitive contract that mandates such participation. The current legal conception of compulsory military service does not allow for examination of whether a war is just or not, or whether one has given prior consent to participation or not. So modern compulsory military service is in fact bloodshed against the conscripted individual, perpetrated by secular government. Even though militias and the military are necessary, human laws forcing participation in them are not, and are simply bad laws that should not exist, and therefore never need exemptions to them.

In order to remedy this situation, secular governments should eliminate all attempts at compulsory military service. 5 This suggestion would obviously look like a "horrible" to Justice Scalia and company. No doubt they were convinced that such an action might leave the nation undefended. After 9/11/01, this may seem especially scary to defenders of the status quo like Scalia, and to others who believe the statists’ 9/11 narrative. But if secular governments were to acknowledge that they are lawful only when they adhere to the jurisdictions of secular social compacts, secular governments would eliminate all their spending on everything but those things that are essential to secular social compacts. By eliminating all this wasteful spending, they would have ample funds available to provide "top dollar" to people who volunteer for military service. That would eliminate the perceived need for secular compulsory military service, by making voluntary military service an attractive, honored, and admirably remunerated vocation. But a better-paid general military is not the optimal source of security when the united States are under numerous threats from a variety of sectors. When threats are at the grass roots, that’s where defense needs to be. 6 By (i)acknowledging that general, State, and local governments are secular; (ii)acknowledging that religious social compacts have an unalienable Right to have jural societies that are fully armed; and (iii)developing and arming such grass-roots jural societies; the American people – both denizens and citizens – will be able to defend themselves far more effectively than through Scalia’s compulsory military service.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. As implied in Boerne v. Flores, land, i.e., a defensible geographical jurisdiction, is essential to having a functional religious social compact. Every lawful social compact, including every religious social compact, contains both a jural society and an ecclesiastical society. The jural society might be the bare minimum (a)to ensure that the parties to the religious social compact are not guilty of bloodshed, and if they are, to either execute justice against them or hand them over to a secular jural society to do the same; and (b)to defend the religious social compact against any outsiders, including secular governments, the UN, and terrorists, that might attempt to damage or destroy anything within the geographical jurisdiction of the religious social compact. Given that this is the reasonable calling to every Christian jural society, it’s reasonable to believe that the jural society might form a militia to execute the jural society’s defensive duty. It might even be written into the social compact that every able-bodied male of a certain age might be required, as a party to the compact, to participate in the militia. It might also be written into the social compact that if called upon to help an umbrella secular social compact to execute a bloodshed-motivated military action against some threat, the religious jural society’s militia would, in fact, lend such assistance. This is an important part of the remedy to this "horrible" seen by Scalia and company. 7

If the united States were to genuinely operate by consent, and if it were thereby genuinely worth defending, then the united States would have no trouble finding volunteers for military service. If the nation were to operate as a natural rights polity, then every secular social compact would have a militia, and the general militia could be activated as needed.

(ii) Payment of Taxes:

As mentioned, every human being is morally obligated to execute justice against perpetrators of bloodshed, and both obligated morally and obligated under globally prescribed human law to avoid being a perpetrator of bloodshed. Given our attempts at living in a civilized society, these obligations translate into the following: Every human being (with capacity) is morally obligated (but not obligated by globally prescribed human law), (a)to pay taxes to his/her local jural society and/or ecclesiastical society for the sake of executing justice against perpetrators of bloodshed by proxy, and/or (b)to work actively as a member of a jural society or ecclesiastical society to execute justice against perpetrators of bloodshed. These are the only moral tax obligations that are universal. But because the Genesis 9:6 positive duty is not accompanied by a penalty to be executed against people who fail to perform the positive duty, these moral obligations do not translate immediately into human law obligations. They translate by way of participation in a cognitive contract. So for people who are voluntarily party to the social compact that manifests itself as the united States, these are the only tax obligations that the general government of the united States is lawful to enforce through confiscation. The general government can lawfully confiscate from such people because those people have given their prior consent to allow such confiscation. But given that the general government is lawful only to the extent that it operates within the confines of being a secular social compact, such social compact becomes unlawful whenever it spends such revenues on anything other than execution of justice against bloodshed. It also becomes unlawful whenever it attempts to confiscate such taxes from anyone who has not consented to such taxation.

At this point we could draft our own parade of horribles that would be composed not merely of futuristic "horribles", but would, in fact, be real and present perpetrations of bloodshed by agencies like the IRS, the BATF, the CIA, and numerous other agencies of the administrative state. But for the sake of brevity, we’ll forgo the Welfare State "parade" for now. The much bigger problem is not with how revenues are collected, but with how they are spent. Most of the revenues of all secular governments in the united States are NOT spent on executing justice against bloodshed. They are spent on an overabundance of good-seeming projects that have nothing whatever to do with bloodshed. In other words, they are spent on bad laws. If the funds spent on such projects were collected from voluntary donations, then such good-seeming projects might be lawful if they were spent by some entity other than the secular social compact. But they are not collected through voluntary donations, and they are not lawful. They are collected through confiscatory taxation. They are collected through government-sponsored bloodshed.

In order to remedy this situation, secular governments should start by making a direct linkage between taxing and spending. The entire tax-base must be voluntary. Otherwise, this is not government by the consent of the governed. No doubt this suggestion would sound "horrible" to Justice Scalia and company. No doubt they were convinced that an action like this would surely be the demise of the nation. If secular government manages the process properly, it will not be the demise of the nation, but the liberation of it. All the functions of secular governments that are not lawful functions of secular social compacts, would necessarily be privatized or abolished. The attitude to take in this privatization / abolition process is that such agencies, properties, etc., already belong to the American people, not to secular governments. The problem lies in finding capable management for the rightful owners. It’s not a good idea to go the same route that the Soviet Union went at its dissolution. Giving collectivist agencies to private operators for a pittance doesn’t give the real owners, the American people, adequate say in how the agencies will be managed in the private sector. Selling to the highest bidder is also not always the best way to go. For every such agency or function, there will probably be some variation on how best to transfer such functions from the public sector to the private sector. One way might be to assume that every citizen has a voting share in the organization, and citizens would be able to vote on how the privatization process should proceed. The real problem is not the transfer process. The real problem is, first, the resolve to do it, and second, the knowhow necessary to make sure that the result is jurisdictionally lawful. The resolve to do it comes from the American people being aware of what our present circumstances are. One of the most potent ways to make this awareness widespread is to repeal all tax withholding laws. This delivers employers from being coerced into being tax collectors. It makes employees genuinely aware of how much of their paychecks they’re giving to secular government. — Whatever ultra vires entities cannot be properly privatized should be abolished.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. One of the big obstacles that Christian churches now have is that they are almost universally obligated to operate as 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3), "tax-exempt not-for-profit" corporations. 8 This – along with numerous other misconstructions of American law – makes it clear that most churches have a corrupted status. Under present circumstances, their ability to own truly private land, and thereby establish genuine geographical jurisdiction, is limited. Their legal ability to take actions that directly impact secular governments is limited. Their ability to form truly functional jural and ecclesiastical societies, and therefore functional religious social compacts, is limited. It is therefore critical for every American Christian to either (a)abandon their §501(c)(3) church, and form a non-§501(c)(3) church instead, or (b)convert their §501(c)(3) church into a non-§501(c)(3) church. It’s critical for every American Christian to then take their non-§501(c)(3) church to the next step: The non-§501(c)(3) churches need to form religious social compacts, meaning that they need to form jural and ecclesiastical societies. Each of these religious social compacts needs to assume all religious police powers over its geographical jurisdiction. All health, safety, education, morality, and welfare functions need to be taken care of locally, within the geographical jurisdiction. By becoming a party to such a religious social compact, a person gives prior consent to pay taxes to the religious social compact for religious police powers. Many of these religious police powers are the same religious police powers that should be denied to secular social compacts. — It’s much more important for God-fearing people to form religious social compacts than it is for them to push secular governments to change. It’s prudent for us to believe that "judgment must begin at the house of God" (1 Peter 4:17; KJV). So it’s important for us to change "the house of God" first. Whether any given individual party to such a religious social compact continues paying taxes to pay for functions of secular government that are not lawful functions of a secular social compact, needs to be decided privately by each party, according to his/her own conscience.

It’s important to recognize that a mechanism already exists for religious social compacts to pay for the umbrella services of the general secular social compact: the "direct" tax of Article I §2 cl 3 and §9 cl 4. 9 If the religious social compact pays "direct Taxes" for the lawful services of the general, State, and other secular governments, then individual members of the religious social compact should be relieved of needing to pay anything more. If the united States were to genuinely operate by consent, and if they were thereby genuinely worth funding, then the united States should have no trouble finding adequate funding from volunteers. If this confederate republic were to operate as a natural rights polity, then there should be ample people who value their natural rights, both within religious social compacts and not, and to fund whatever secular social compacts that need to be funded.

(iii) Health and Safety Regulations:

Generally, health and safety regulations are police powers that are unlawful when executed by a secular social compact, because, under the hermeneutical prologue’s general conception of these things, they do not constitute bloodshed. But when Scalia included "health and safety regulation" in his "parade of horribles", he qualified that expression by saying, "such as manslaughter and child neglect laws . . . , compulsory vaccination laws . . . , drug laws . . . , and traffic laws". Manslaughter is obviously bloodshed. Child neglect might be bloodshed, so it needs to be examined. As indicated below, "compulsory vaccination laws", "drug laws", and "traffic laws" are not government responses to bloodshed, but are instead examples of how the existing statist system perpetrates bloodshed. So under this category of "health and safety regulation", we’ll only speak generally about such health and safety regulation.

Generally, all health and safety regulations of secular governments do not pertain specifically to bloodshed, and they therefore need to be privatized or abolished. Without a doubt, Scalia and company would think this proposal to be close to treason. They would certainly assume that such a "horrible" would result in social chaos. But if the privatization / abolition proceeds as outlined in (ii), "payment of taxes", above, the process would be orderly, and the result would be liberating.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do, in regard to health and safety regulations that are not bloodshed? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. This means that we will attempt to implement "health and safety regulation" – as well as other religious police powers – within our religious social compacts. Again, the advantage of doing it this way is that religious social compacts operate, by definition, by consent, while universal consent within a secular milieu is extremely unlikely. 10

(iii-a) Manslaughter:

The distinction between murder and manslaughter can be found in the Bible (Numbers 35:9-34). The distinction between murder and manslaughter revolves around the intention of the perpetrator. If the killing is intentional, then the killing is murder, both in the Bible and in most modern American jurisdictions. Likewise, if the killing is unintentional, then it is manslaughter and not murder. 11 The point is that manslaughter, like murder, is bloodshed. By classifying laws against manslaughter, against obvious bloodshed, with child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws, all under the general heading of "health and safety regulation", Scalia was displaying a serious lack of discernment in his classification of laws. That lack of discernment is precisely what one would expect of anyone who lacks commitment to the natural rights polity.

Because manslaughter is by definition bloodshed ex delicto, laws against it should not appear in the same general classification of laws, "health and safety regulation", with laws that do not pertain to execution of justice against bloodshed, such as compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws. Within the context of Scalia’s "parade of horribles", his inclusion of "manslaughter" indicates that he thought that there might be some religion in the united States that demanded exemption for manslaughter that might occur in the normal practice of that religion. It’s difficult to imagine such a religion. But it’s not difficult to imagine a religion that practiced murder as part of its normal practices, and that might want an exemption for its religious murders. In fact, Scalia even mentioned such a religion in the oral arguments in Smith. He mentioned the Aztecs’ practice of human sacrifice. If such a religion demanded an exemption for its practice of ritualized murder, then, given the ideological flippancy of the Court’s jurisprudence, the government might have a hard time determining whether it had a compelling interest in burdening such practice, and if so, how to allow the practice to continue in the least burdensome manner possible. Murder is the epitome of bloodshed, and manslaughter is close to it. In fact, according to the natural rights polity, secular government exists to execute justice against bloodshed, especially against murder and manslaughter. That is the core of the secular religion. The fact that Scalia and company were worried that the compelling interest test might allow religious exemptions for murder and manslaughter was a testimony to the fragility of their jurisprudence. They wandered so far away from the natural rights core of the founding documents that all Americans should be deeply concerned that the supreme Court has completely abandoned that core.

To remedy this serious problem that exists in the secular governments of the united States, such governments need to adhere exclusively to the secular religion. That would naturally give rise to the natural rights polity.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do, in regard to manslaughter? — The fact that Scalia and company were worried about religious exemptions for manslaughter says that there is a potential in the secular arena for not enforcing against bloodshed at all, regardless of what form the bloodshed may take. Since the legalization of abortion and the propagation of never-ending warfare, human life has become worse than cheap in the eyes of many. It’s crucial that Christians refuse to allow that attitude to exist in their churches, regardless of how depraved the surrounding culture may get. These circumstances make it absolutely crucial that churches build internal jural societies and ecclesiastical societies. Such jural societies would make it extremely difficult for people to get away with murder and manslaughter within their midst, even if the surrounding secular governments were to give religious exemptions to religions that practiced ritual murder and manslaughter.

(iii-b) Child Neglect Laws:

In practically every State in the united States, there is a State agency called something like "Child Protective Services" (CPS). In practically every State, CPS has acquired a reputation for being more a sponsor of child abuse than an enforcer against it. These agencies have this reputation because they have largely been taken over by networks dedicated to systematic pedophilia. Even though this is true in the eyes of this author, and in the eyes of many who have studied this subject, the existence and nature of CPS is slightly off topic in this examination of Scalia’s parade of horribles. So we’ll not discuss the faults of CPS further here, but will try to examine "child neglect laws" within the context of Scalia’s parade instead of within the context of CPS.

The core question here is whether child neglect is bloodshed. If it is, then every secular social compact should have laws against it. And if it is bloodshed, then it makes sense that Scalia and company would disparage any attempt by any religion to procure exemptions from such laws on free exercise grounds. Bloodshed should never be exempted from prosecution on any grounds.

The big difference between child abuse and child neglect is that the former is active while the latter is passive. Some people may conceive of child neglect as a form of child abuse. If person A has some kind of contractual obligation to care for child B, then A’s negligence in providing such care is certainly abuse. But if there is no such contract, and if A refuses to care for B, and if A is not actively abusing B, then it’s difficult to see how A is genuinely abusing B through neglect. Within a religious social compact, there might be laws requiring adults to care for children. But given the strict and constrained subject matter jurisdiction of every secular social compact, there’s no way generally applicable laws can force adults to take such care without violating that strict jurisdiction. So it’s important to recognize the difference between child abuse and child neglect. It’s also important to recognize how child neglect might arise in the secular arena, by way of a lack of contractual obligations.

As described in Porter’s Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood, there is a distinction between pre-cognitive contracts and cognitive contracts. In secular human law as it presently exists, there is no such thing as a pre-cognitive contract. In the secular arena, statists claim that ordinary people have obligations to the state as part of the statists’ efforts at replacing God with the state. But statists don’t rely on nature and God as the source of such obligations. On the other hand, according to the natural rights polity, there are some obligations that are built into being human, where such obligations pertain to recognition, by one human, of the natural rights of other humans. All humans have natural rights, so there must be natural obligations for each human to recognize and not violate the natural rights of other humans. Because both these rights and these obligations are fundamental to being human, and therefore transcend any given person’s cognitive consent, we call these rights and obligations "pre-cognitive". That such rights and obligations necessarily exist is evidenced by the fact that they are posited in the Bible’s global Covenants. The fact that all living people are inherently party to the global covenant, and therefore have such natural rights and duties, has a bearing on the possibility that there is such a pre-cognitive contract between every pre-natal child and his/her mother. The Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood argues at length that such a pre-cognitive contract between mother and child must exist as a rational necessity, even if the mother did not intend to become pregnant, and therefore did not cognitively consent to enter into such a pre-cognitive contract with another person inhabiting her body. The existence of such a pre-cognitive contract between mother and child is the foundation upon which child neglect laws must be founded in the natural rights polity.

By following the line of reasoning in Porter’s memo on natural personhood, it’s evident that if a child has been born to a mother, there is necessarily a cognitive bailment contract between the mother and the child. The child’s natural rights and abilities are bailed into the possession of the mother, with the stipulation that as the child grows up, those natural rights and abilities will be transferred from the mother back to the child, the true owner. If the mother were married, then she would share this bailment contract with her husband. Under such circumstances, the bailment would be a guardian-dependent contract that would allow those guardians to use compulsion against the child as deemed necessary. As long as such compulsion did not result in obvious damage to the child, a secular entity like CPS would have no jurisdiction. On the contrary, when such a bailment contract exists between a cognitively disabled or immature person and that person’s guardian, it’s critical that secular courts respect the jurisdictional boundaries of that contract, and not interfere where no real harm exists, and where the genuine terms of this lawful contract are being followed.

A parent may positively compel his/her child to do an act, or negatively compel him/her to avoid an act, as long as the parent’s act of compelling is within the ambit of his/her contractual duties under the parent-child contract. That ambit should deflect any jurisdictional claim by any secular court. 12

This obviously means that secular social compacts should tread very cautiously in regard to guardian-dependent contracts, and should avoid seeing abuse where no real abuse exists. Such guardian-dependent bailment contracts are inherently religious and not secular, evidenced by the fact that what the bailor (the child) bails into the possession of the bailee (the guardian) is intangible. So in the same way secular jurisdictions should assiduously avoid meddling in religious social compacts, they should do the same regarding guardian-dependent bailment contracts. Even so, there’s no doubt that child neglect exists, and that such neglect demands some kind of remedy.

The realm of child neglect, as we see it here, exists after the child is born. At birth, there is necessarily a transition from a pregnancy bailment into a guardian-dependent bailment.

Because the infant is so utterly incapacitated, he/she cannot survive without someone taking care of him/her. Obviously, the infant is still incapable of cognitive consent to anything. But to assume that the infant doesn’t consent to entering into a guardian-dependent bailment contract with someone, is to assume that the infant would rather be dead than be involved in such a contract. That’s absurd. . . . 

Obviously, at this transition from the pregnancy bailment to the guardian-dependent bailment, the mother has precedence over all other possible claimants to the role of bailee. . . .  It should also be obvious that if anyone else qualified to be bailee volunteered to do so, under the condition that the mother rejects her opportunity to be bailee, such a third party should be allowed to take on that contractual responsibility. This is certainly preferable to allowing the infant to starve.

Based on . . .  this bailment contract, they may have a "legally enforceable obligation to keep their" child alive . . .  This legal obligation . . .  arises out of the guardian’s voluntarily entering into the bailment contract and thereby assuming the obligation to pursue the bailment’s "special object", the growth, development, and health, in short, the welfare, of the dependent.

Obviously, this guardian-dependent bailment contract is based on "naked promises". 13

The fact that this guardian-dependent bailment contract is based on "naked promises" means that secular social compacts have limited jurisdiction. If the guardian in such a contract is actively abusing the child by perpetrating delicts, then the secular jural society certainly has subject matter jurisdiction. The delicts would need to be in the nature of extreme harm beyond mere corporeal punishment. On the other hand, if the guardian is merely neglecting the child, then the secular jural society has no jurisdiction, and the secular ecclesiastical society also lacks jurisdiction because the guardian-dependent bailment is based on naked promises. This appears to be the epitome of "horrible" from Scalia’s perspective.

What should Bible-believing Christians do about such child neglect, regardless of what secular governments do? To answer this question, we’ll use an obvious instance of child neglect as an example: a parent-guardian allowing his/her child to starve. Rothbard says the following about such circumstances:

The law . . .  may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or keep it alive. . . .  This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g. by not feeding it). 14

Rothbard is emphatic that parents have such a right. In fact, at present, reports from maternity-ward workers indicate that it’s not uncommon for hospital workers to allow unwanted infants to starve to death. This is generally rationalized by "bioethicists" as being allowable because the infant’s death did not result from a positive act. Because the death is not the result of a positive act, it’s not a delict. So no lawful secular social compact has any grounds for arresting or indicting anyone for such neglect. So Rothbard is right and so is this common practice of passive euthanasia, from this secular perspective. But Bible-believing Christians can see that this is not morally right and not in conformity to natural law, even if it is allowable by secular human law. The same basic circumstances exist in practically all instances of passive child neglect. It’s extremely important to understand the contractual parameters that exist in such circumstances. 15 When the bailee of such a bailment contract is practicing such passive euthanasia, it’s critical to recognize that such bailee is thereby repudiating his/her participation in the bailment contract with the child.

So anyone, from anywhere, who goes into such a situation to rescue the child, has a lawful right to do so. Such a rescuer would essentially be "homesteading" a new bailment contract with the dependent. 16

So what Christians should do under such circumstances, is whatever they can to rescue such children, without resorting to calling CPS or expecting secular government to intervene.

(iii-c) Compulsory Vaccination Laws:

For decades now, secular governments have been using compulsory education as an opportunity to force vaccinations on children. Compulsory education within a secular social compact is wrong, because it is compulsory, and therefore bloodshed. "[C]ompulsory vaccination laws" are wrong for the same reason. Whether children are vaccinated needs to be left to the prerogative of parents, not to secular governments who have an unlawful claim on all children as wards of the mega-state. Likewise, whether adults are vaccinated needs to be left to the prerogative of the given adult. So all "compulsory vaccination laws" need to be repealed. — Once again, we see Justice Scalia rolling his eyes and grimacing at the thought of what a "horrible" idea this is. What can we think, except that he, his legacy, and his cronies have been propagating bad laws for far too long?

In 1905, the supreme Court made a decision in a controversial case that is still reverberating in American law and politics. The case is Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. In Jacobson, the supreme Court upheld a State law that encouraged local governments in Massachusetts to force local people to take smallpox vaccines whenever local health officials deemed such vaccinations necessary. This case has been cited in numerous subsequent cases to reinforce the conviction that mandatory vaccination laws are within every State’s police powers. From the metaconstitution’s perspective, such police powers are religious police powers that should not be exercised by secular social compacts. But Scalia did not, and the supreme Court’s jurisprudence in general does not, recognize such jurisdictional limitations. If a religious social compact has laws mandating vaccinations for its members, that’s lawful. For any secular social compact to have mandatory vaccination laws is essentially an open declaration that such social compact is jurisdictionally dysfunctional.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. This means that each of us needs to be party to a religious social compact that implements religious police powers. Such a religious social compact might require parties to get vaccinated, or it might not. — Hard core advocates of vaccination believe that vaccination should not be voluntary. But the fact of the matter is that a percentage of all who are vaccinated get sick from the vaccination, and some die. This means that such an act of government-perpetrated bloodshed demands retribution. Hard core advocates for compulsory vaccination claim this is too bad, because it’s a small price to pay for the elimination of contagious diseases. But people who practice alternative medicine have totally different views. The bottom line is that every human being owns their physical body as an unalienable Right. Any claims of secular government to the contrary are criminal. All adults therefore have an unalienable Right to decide for themselves whether they and their children will be vaccinated. Secular governments are way out-of-bounds in overriding this unalienable Right.

(iii-d) Drug Laws:

After all that’s been said about "drug laws" in the preceding pages, whatever we say here in addressing Scalia’s parade of horribles will be overkill. So we’ll just say this much for the sake of summation: It’s unlawful for secular social compacts to promulgate and enforce drug laws because doing so is a direct violation of globally prescribed human law. That’s because the global covenant makes it unavoidably obvious that every human being owns his or her physical body. For a secular government to mandate what a person can or cannot eat, drink, wear, shoot up, snort, absorb as suppositories, or consume in any other way is for the secular government to violate property rights. People either own their bodies, and get to do what they want with them (assuming no bloodshed), or they don’t. If they don’t, then they have either contractually volunteered through prior consent to curtail consumption of certain substances, or they are being forced by non-consensual laws to curtail consumption of certain substances.

We don’t doubt that it’s stupid to consume some things. People are not made to eat rocks. Cyanide consumption is suicidal. Consumption of many substances is almost always poor stewardship of what God has given us. Even so, who gets to decide what’s good for us, and what’s not? When we were children, our parents decided. When we grew up, we, as adults, should decide. Regrettably, in our country at this time, adults are not allowed to make such decisions for themselves, or for their children. That’s because the secular governments make de facto claims that all people within their respective geographical jurisdictions are wards of the mega-state. This claim plays itself out as bloodshed perpetrated by secular governments on a massive scale.

The type of economic system that is the automatic by-product of any serious implementation of the hermeneutical prologue’s view of human law, is not a capitalist system, and not a communist system. It’s a free market. This doesn’t mean that we have open borders, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t have rules. It means that we have borders that are controlled by social compacts, and these social compacts embody the rules. It doesn’t mean that we have no black markets. It means that secular social compacts minimize the existence of black markets within their own immediate jurisdictions, by eliminating bad laws. But religious social compacts still get to control their borders according to their own, internal positive laws. If people want to continue the status quo regarding FDA / DEA regulations and controlled substance laws, then they can band together in religious social compacts with like-minded people, and maintain such status quo. Even so, all "drug laws" – including all the regulations of the Food and Drug Administration and all controlled substance laws – MUST be repealed by these secular governments that purport to be secular. That’s because – if the existence of such secular governments is lawful under the hermeneutical prologue’s metaconstitution – then they are secular social compacts. As such, they have no lawful power or authority to impose "drug laws" on anyone. — Here again, it’s easy to imagine Scalia and company bent over their toilet seats in disgust. The thought of relinquishing such power, and the social chaos that would ensue, is too much for them to bear. They might rather be criminals than allow it.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. Regarding food, drugs, medicines, and practically anything else that people put into themselves, Bible-believing Christians are spread all over the map. There is a multitude of different preferences, and a variety of ways of rationalizing such preferences based on Scripture. Since this is an application of the Bible’s global prescription of human law to the Constitution – and not a full-blown systematic theology – we’ll not make recommendations about what people should eat, drink, or consume in any other way. We’ll instead make general statements about how we should proceed. Now, regardless of what secular governments do, Bible-believing Christians should consensually compact themselves into religious social compacts. Christian jural societies should do the bare minimum (a)to ensure that the parties to the religious social compact are not guilty of bloodshed, and if they are, to either execute justice against them or hand them over to a secular jural society to do the same; and (b)to defend the religious social compact against any outsiders that might attempt to damage or destroy anything within the geographical jurisdiction of the religious social compact. Christian ecclesiastical societies should, by the prior consent or acquiescence of all parties, establish and enforce religious police powers that accord with the preferences of all parties to the religious social compact. — If the religious social compact is composed primarily of Bible-believing Native American Church members, then the religious police powers would allow peyote to cross the borders of the religious social compact’s geographical jurisdiction, and peyote would be completely legal within that jurisdiction. But the same religious social compact might disallow entry of other substances into the community. For example, alcoholic beverages might be banned. Similar claims can be rightly made about UDV. — If the religious social compact is composed primarily of Bible-believing people who want to live by the present FDA / DEA regulations and controlled substance laws, then they could consensually have religious police powers that reflect that. If the FDA were privatized, then this same community might subscribe to whatever the FDA decided about any given substance. The police powers of the religious social compact would allow community police to stop substance smugglers at the borders of the compact’s geographical jurisdiction. — This approach allows the continuation of diversity and free exercise. It also allows people to protect their children and themselves against undesirable influences. It ensures that Christians, in surrendering the ownership of their bodies to God – and thanking Him for the stewardship authority over the same that He gives in return – are less likely (i)to subject themselves to un-Godly temptations, and (ii)to impose their biblical standards of morality on other people without the latter’s consent.

 

 

(iii-e) Traffic Laws:

In accordance with our view of Article I § 8 cl 7, 17 we believe that all roads and highways that are presently owned, operated, and policed by secular governments should be privatized. This doesn’t mean that the roads and highways should be sold to the highest bidder, or given for a pittance to the most prominent ex-collectivist. It means that the American people own these roads, not the government. It means that the current administration of these roads is de facto bloodshed, because the funds that support the administration of these roads are collected by confiscatory taxation. Confiscatory taxation is unlawful, especially for the purpose of administering roads and highways. So this confiscatory taxation is theft. So the roads are administered through bloodshed. The American people own these roads. It’s absolutely essential that these roads be administered in a manner that is not bloodshed. They must be privatized, because road administration is outside the lawful jurisdiction of secular social compacts.

Here’s one idea about how they could be privatized: For a given secular government – and the roads that are presently under the immediate jurisdiction of that secular government – certificates of ownership could be presented to every citizen of that secular government. Each certificate allows one vote. A committee could be formed through existing political processes (meaning open to public scrutiny and recommendations), specifically for the purpose of designing a variety of privatization options. Everyone with a certificate would thereafter have the option of voting on the various plans. The plan that receives the majority of the votes would be the privatization option / plan that would be implemented. — After the roads are privatized, the big question becomes, who owns, operates, and polices them, and how are these administrative functions performed? These are questions that would be decided by the voting process. But most people, because they use the roads so much, are most concerned about how they are maintained and policed. Would it automatically mean tollbooths everywhere? Would it mean that drunk drivers got off without any punishment whatever? — If it were left up to us, the maintenance of these roads would not change much, and payments for such maintenance would be made by the people who owned and used the roads. There wouldn’t be tollbooths, because there are plenty of other ways to pay for roads and highways. We wouldn’t change the policing process much either, except in one very important respect: The organization that would form out of this voting process would not be a secular social compact, but would be some other kind of organization. For this hypothetical voting process, the parties of the new organization would be anyone with a certificate who agreed to abide by the by-laws of the new organization. This new organization would have municipal police powers pertinent exclusively to the function of those roads. This means that parties to this contract would be giving prior consent to abide by these contractual positive laws. These contractual positive laws would probably include laws about speed limits, driving while intoxicated, stop signs, etc. People would be giving prior consent to abiding by such positive laws, rather than being forced by a form of government that appears to the ordinary person to be out of control, and to be abusive on many fronts.

Although Scalia and company might have a valid concern about some religion using the compelling interest test to get an exemption from normal traffic laws, reforming existing jurisdictionally dysfunctional governmental entities so that they are constrained to being secular social compacts would not allow such exemptions. Traffic laws are necessary, and they would continue after such a reformation, but without being the cause of jurisdictional dysfunction.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. The type of organization that would develop out of the above sketch of highway privatization, would not be a religious social compact because it would not have religious police powers beyond those necessary to manage the roads. But we should encourage the development of that kind of organization as surely as we would want good roads within the geographical jurisdiction of our own religious social compact.

(iv) Social Welfare Legislation:

Scripture makes it unavoidably obvious that Christians are obligated by their covenant with God to do whatever is within our means to take care of widows, orphans, poor people, disabled people, and other dependent and frail people of every kind. For generations now, instead of doing this, nominal Christians have been turning such responsibilities over to secular governments. The result is the American Welfare State. This Welfare State has more in common with an Orwellian Tower of Babel than with anything upon which God would put His stamp of approval. As He does with much of human iniquity, He may allow it for a time. But in the end, He will make sure that it’s destroyed. If we are wise, we will turn it into something that glorifies Him before He destroys it.

All "social welfare legislation" (at least on its face) is justified as part of a religious social compact. None of it is justified as part of a secular social compact. That’s because – among other things – of the way that funds for the administration of secular "social welfare legislation" are collected. They are collected through confiscatory taxation. Since such taxes are not collected through voluntary means, and since involuntary means are never justified, taxation for the administration of the "social welfare legislation" is theft. In other words, such taxation is government-perpetrated bloodshed. Therefore, all administrative agencies that spring from such "social welfare legislation" need to be privatized or abolished, and all such "social welfare legislation" needs to be repealed.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. All the good-seeming objectives of secular "social welfare legislation" deserve to be implemented locally within our religious social compacts, on a consensual basis. So as Bible-believing Christians, that’s what we should do. But there’s one other aspect of this that we might consider. — If the secular social welfare agencies were privatized – in a manner similar to the process recommended above for roads and highways – then these administrative agencies would be funded by voluntary mechanisms. It might behoove Christian social compacts to consider such newly emancipated social welfare agencies as adjunct organizations that have strictly and narrowly defined purposes, functions, and definitions. Then, Christian religious social compacts could help fund such narrowly defined organizations for the sake of fulfilling our obligations to minister to poor and dependent people.

(iv-a) Minimum Wage Laws:

Minimum wage laws are based on a misconception about how markets operate. In a free market, what people get paid is a function of supply and demand. The problem with this claim is that the united States have never had a genuinely free market. From the time that Alexander Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, if not before that, the monetary system has been warped by fractional-reserve banking, and has been warped further by the jurisdictional dysfunction of the de facto governments. — Every business enterprise that doesn’t resort to counterfeiting has a finite amount of money to spend on labor, regardless of whether the labor is skilled or unskilled. Minimum wage laws have been created under the presumption that forcing employers to spend at least a certain amount for labor would ensure that every laborer would have a so-called "living wage". Instead, what minimum wage laws really do is limit the number of employees an employer can hire. Regardless of whether minimum wage laws exist or not, the employer still has a finite amount of money to spend on labor. If wages are set according to supply and demand, rather than being mandated by the Welfare State, then the employer will be able to hire according to what the market will bear. Politicians don’t generally like having wages set by what the market will bear, rather than by them, because they are statists who inherently want more power for the state. Minimum wage laws tend to generate unemployment among the least qualified workers, which drives them into the arms of the Welfare State for survival, which such power-mad statists love all the more.

In short, all minimum wage laws currently being enforced in the jurisdictionally dysfunctional secular social compacts of the united States must be abolished. There is no way to privatize them. If any given religious social compact wants to have minimum wage laws within its exclusive jurisdiction, then that’s the prerogative of such a social compact.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow his ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one another. Secular government’s good-seeming objective of providing a minimum wage to wage earners needs to be recognized for what it is, a hoax that’s part of a much more grandiose, globe-gobbling hoax. It’s important for Christians to boycott this sick system as much as possible, and to avoid entering into any kind of contracts with entities in the secular arena who are on the side of the globe-gobblers.

Given that secular minimum wage laws should be abolished, something equivalent to such abolition would be if every religion were exempted from such laws. Scalia and company would howl from their graves.

(iv-b) Child Labor Laws:

It’s important for all people to start learning how to work while they are still young. But some types of child labor are clearly abuse, and worse, some are clearly bloodshed. Turning children into prostitutes is a hideous breed of bloodshed that deserves retribution. Putting them into hazardous work that endangers their lives is also bloodshed. For an adult to volunteer for hazardous work, is his or her prerogative. But children have not reached the age at which their consent should work in anyone’s favor other than the child’s. So if a child consents to crawl into a mine that is known to be dangerous, child-endangerment laws should override his consent, and whoever put the child up to that act should be prosecuted by the local jural society. But if a six-year old is instructed by his parents to milk his goat regularly, no child labor laws should have jurisdiction. But if a child is sent to work in some sweatshop, where he’s likely to get "repetitive motion syndrome", that endangers the child’s health and should be stopped by the local jural society. — These are the kinds of criteria that should be used in determining what child labor laws should be repealed by secular governments, and which of them to keep. If such secular laws properly conformed to the natural rights polity, then no religion should be exempt from them.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. These religious social compacts have huge advantages over present circumstances, regarding care given to children. If children go to schools that are located within the geographical jurisdictions of Christian religious social compacts, and are run by standards set by the parties thereto, then the children are spared exposure to bad influences from bad curricula, drug abusers, bad media, Columbine killers, and secular limitations on what kinds of constructive activities children are allowed to do. Each such community can develop its own "child labor laws". They could be stricter than those enforced by secular jural societies. But they would never be more hazardous to the child’s welfare.

(iv-c) Animal Cruelty Laws:

Generally, animals are chattels. This derives from the attributes with which God endowed human beings, relative to animals. For example, in Genesis 1:26,

God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (NASB).

In other words, human beings are endowed with the ability and calling to take dominion over the animal kingdom. We are called to take possession of them, and treat them as property. Does this mean that we are called to abuse them, and be cruel to them? No! It means that we are called to be good stewards of them. This calling is a global attribute of humanity. All human beings are called to be good stewards over the animal kingdom, and especially over whatever animals may come into our immediate possession. But is this global attribute enforceable by way of globally prescribed human law? — No! Globally prescribed human law pertains to bloodshed, and to bloodshed alone. Bloodshed is inflicted upon humans, not upon animals. — So if someone comes into possession of an animal, and is cruel to that animal, according to the hermeneutical prologue, does a secular social compact have grounds for imposing its positive law upon that person?

The only conditions under which a secular social compact could have jurisdiction over animal cruelty is (a)if the animal cruelty exists in the immediate geographical jurisdiction of the secular government, and certain other conditions are met; or (b)if the animal is somehow subject to a contract over which the secular ecclesiastical society has jurisdiction. — (a)Suppose Freddie Limp-Wit takes his horse into a police station belonging to the general government. Suppose he there beats the horse with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Without a doubt, there would need to be some rules governing this secular property. Anything that constituted a major distraction to these police-people – that would sidetrack them from doing their job – would probably need to be restricted. So certain limited types of laws against mala prohibita would be lawfully applicable on such pieces of geographical jurisdiction. If, across the street from this police station, there was the geographical jurisdiction of a religious social compact, and Fred took his horse there and did the same thing, the secular social compact would not have jurisdiction, because it would lack subject matter jurisdiction, even if the religious social compact was within the umbrella geographical jurisdiction of the secular social compact. But on their turf, the secular police would reasonably have a legitimate reason for stopping Fred from abusing the horse, and for removing both the horse and Fred from the premises. But that’s about the only penalty that they would be within reason to enforce. — (b)Suppose Fred buys a horse from a stranger. Suppose the purchase agreement stipulates that the buyer will never perpetrate animal cruelty against the horse. Suppose the penalty stipulated for violation of this term is that the horse will automatically become the possession of the seller again, and there will be a 1000 "dollar" fine, payable to the seller. Now suppose that Fred is cruel to the horse. Suppose he beats the horse with a cat-o’-nine tails. Suppose the seller discovers this incident of animal cruelty. The seller brings an ex contractu action against Fred in a secular ecclesiastical court, to enforce the contract. Under this kind of condition, a secular social compact would have jurisdiction over Fred’s case of animal cruelty.

Only these two kinds of situations would allow a secular government to have jurisdiction over animal cruelty. So secular governments should repeal all animal cruelty laws – other than these types of limited positive laws. Given our history, this probably sounds appalling to many people. We can think about how cock fights, dog fights, dog-and-bear fights, starvation of livestock, and many other types of "animal cruelty" that are now illegal, would be legalized. Surely there is no redeeming moral value to allowing these things, and they should remain illegal. Or should they? — Generally, what is moral to one person is disgusting to another. As we scan all the things that would become legal under the standard set by the hermeneutical prologue, most people will applaud some, and be absolutely disgusted by others. But legal neutrality does not imply moral approval. It just removes the enforcement of morality out of the hands of secular police, and puts it into the hands of contract bearers and religious social compacts. These issues essentially pertain to religious police powers, not to secular police powers. This is because animal cruelty laws, as such, and as distinguished from people abusing other people’s property, would be abolished. So there would never be religious exemptions to such laws.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. We are called to be good stewards of what God gives us. All religious social compacts formed by Bible-believing Christians should therefore have religious police powers to curtail and punish culpable people within the respective geographical jurisdictions, regarding animal cruelty. Religious social compacts should also be committed to using every possible free market economic mechanism available to drive animal abusers out of business. But the real problem with the relationship between humanity and the animal kingdom doesn’t pertain to animal cruelty. It pertains to the annihilation of wild species.

(iv-d) Environmental Protection Laws:

In American history, we’ve witnessed the infamous extinction of the passenger pigeon, and the lesser-known extinction of the blue pike, the heath hen, and other species. We’ve witnessed the near extinction of the bison, the bald eagle, the whooping crane, and numerous others. Given that virtually all of these extinctions and near-extinctions were caused by humans, they epitomize poor stewardship. That some of the people who did these things claimed to be Christians is yet one more defamation of the belief system, and the Name, established by Yeshua HaMeshiach. — Wildlife is one of at least four features of the earth over which humanity has not yet taken full dominion, and therefore, genuine stewardship. Others are wild aspects of the vegetable kingdom, air, inland water, and the oceans. 18 Given the extreme dangers of genetically modifying wild species, the perilous nature of poor stewardship is more menacing than ever. So people far more friendly to this Bible-based jurisprudence than Justice Scalia and company are wary of eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency, and its State and local counterparts.

At present, the law does not treat wild animals, wild plants, outside air, inland waterways, and oceans as private property. Generally, secular governments claim de facto ownership of such things. So according to our view, all these things are owned collectively by the American people, because they exist outside the lawful jurisdictions of secular social compacts. — Secular governments also claim de facto ownership of vast tracts of land, especially in the western united States. All the land owned by secular governments that is not used specifically for secular jural or ecclesiastical purposes is owned unlawfully by these secular governments, because ownership of land for no lawful purpose is not within the lawful jurisdiction of a secular social compact. Secular governments may be lawful in exercising complete ownership powers over things like secular police stations, secular court houses, secular capitol buildings, military bases, etc. But they don’t have lawful ownership powers over vast tracts of land in the West or smaller tracts elsewhere. That’s because they only have secular police powers over such land, which means that secular governments are limited almost totally to jural police powers within such secular geographical jurisdictions, and they lack subject matter jurisdiction for any other purpose. So all this land is also owned collectively by the American people. For the sake of brevity, we’ll call this land commons land. — For the sake of brevity, we’ll call all these things – wild animals, wild plants, outside air, inland waterways, adjacent oceans, and commons land, the American commons. Because it’s obvious that wild animals, wild plants, outside air, inland waterways, adjacent oceans, and commons land exist in every nation, we’ll call the general term for such things commons.

Environmental forebodings fall into essentially two categories: (a)genuine, real, and serious threats of bloodshed that demand standing injunctions; (b)apparent threats that might be real, but might also be imaginary (like the UN’s long-standing climate hoax). 19 Generally, any agent of probable bloodshed that is set in motion in the American commons demands a standing injunction by a secular social compact.

(a)Here’s an example of an environmental threat that demands a standing injunction: During the 1950s and 60s, farmers used huge amounts of DDT and other toxic fertilizers and insecticides on their crops. These substances were washed by rain into streams, rivers, and lakes. Microscopic organisms ate these substances. Larger organisms ate the microbes. Still larger organisms ate the organisms that ate the microbes. And so on, until toxin-infected organisms were consumed at the top of the food chain. By the end of the 1960s, the bald eagle population in the contiguous united States was devastated because of these substances. Many predatory birds in the Great Lakes region are manifesting genetic deformities to this day. All this absolutely signals poor management of the American commons. But does it signal a threat that demands standing injunctions from secular social compacts? — Irrefutable evidence that humans have suffered genetic defects from the same toxins has never been produced. Perhaps the fact that humans tend to wash farm produce before they eat it, maybe this is why these defects have never shown up clearly in human populations. Or perhaps there are other reasons why such genetic defects have never shown up in humans. But it has definitely been proven that these toxins accumulate at the top of the food chain. It has also been proven that when these toxins are used, they generally escape from what’s normally private property into the American commons. Perhaps the only reason such genetic defects have never been proven in human populations is because DDT, etc., were banned before defects started showing up. Whatever the reason for the lack of evidence, the facts (i)that these substances accumulate at the top of the food chain, (ii)that these substances cause genetic defects at the top of the food chain, and (iii)that these substances escape into the American commons, should be taken as sufficient evidence that these substances demand standing injunctions. If their usage were allowed without restraint, the result would probably be bloodshed on a massive scale. Early in the third millennium, agri-business pundits are claiming that the banning of these substances was caused by irrational hysteria, and that we should go back to using them, and encouraging the developing world to use them. The evidence shows that this is extremely foolish talk. We need standing injunctions against these kinds of substances in the American commons. So this "horrible" would not exist because there would be no exemptions for any religion.

(b)Here’s an example of an apparent environmental threat that is in a gray area, and deserves to be watched carefully by secular jural societies, but doesn’t yet rise to the level demanding a standing injunction: There is evidence that if certain genetically modified salmon were to escape their fish farms to roam the seas freely, there would probably be a collapse of certain wild salmon populations. Whole eco-systems might be destroyed as a result. Commercial fisheries might be destroyed. But thus far, there is a lack of evidence that bloodshed would result from this mishap. Part of the problem is that commercial fishermen generally don’t own what they harvest until they catch it. In other words, they procure their livelihood from the international commons or from the American commons. They harvest wild seafood from international or American waters. They have no claim to such waters, or such fisheries, unless they can enforce such claims. In order to enforce such claims, they need to form social compacts that claim such waters as their geographical jurisdictions. They need to find ways to protect the borders of these geographical jurisdictions, and enforce the police powers of such jurisdictions. They need to use free market mechanisms at every possible opportunity to curtail this kind of mishap by salmon farmers. Until bloodshed can be shown against the property of American people, this danger doesn’t rise to the level demanding a standing injunction. But it definitely deserves thorough observation by secular jural societies – without intervention – until real danger to real property can be proven.

These two examples show that all "environmental protection laws" will not automatically become ineffectual if free exercise is granted. Instead, they show that the American commons can be abused in such a way as to cause genuine bloodshed. Standing injunctions – environmental protection laws – deserve enforcement by secular social compacts when such standing injunctions are based on real threats, as genuine as nuclear suitcase bombs. — In addition to this curtailment of Scalia’s paranoia regarding "environmental protection laws", there are several other observations that we should make here: The American commons belongs first to the American people, not to secular governments. In the same way that roads and highways, postal systems, internet, welfare agencies, the FDA, "public" schools, the Center for Disease Control (CDC), OSHA, etc., should be privatized, the American commons should be privatized. This doesn’t mean that they should be handed over to organized criminals, Soviet style. It also doesn’t mean that they should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. It means that the American people should decide, probably by majority rule, how to divest what is lawfully private property – i.e., what is lawfully the property of religious social compacts and/or individuals – from secular governments, converting such governments into lawful secular governments. Religious social compacts should be formed to administer the protection of wild animals, wild plants, outside air, inland waterways, adjacent oceans, and commons land. This might be one means by which commercial fishermen could get control of their livelihoods.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. We are called to be good stewards of what God gives us. All religious social compacts formed by Bible-believing Christians should therefore have religious police powers to punish people within their respective geographical jurisdictions who endanger the property of people who live outside those geographical jurisdictions. Such religious social compacts should also work in concert together to make sure that the existing American commons is transferred into the hands of people who will be good stewards over such newly privatized property. If done properly, the American commons will be transferred over to much safer hands than those that now administer it. — Again, so much for Scalia’s parade of horribles. 20

(iv-e) Laws Providing for Equality of the Races:

There is no doubt that racism exists in America. For all we know, it may exist for as long as America exists. All Americans have an obligation under the global covenant to make sure that secular social compacts enforce global human law in a way that manifests equal protection. Such equality of rights is a global mandate. Even so, confusion about the difference between rights and privileges has caused secular government to abuse rights, rather than protect them. Generally, rights are given by God. They derive from the fact that people are created in the image of God, and all people are equal in them. But generally, privileges, both natural and conventional, do not delineate equality, but uniqueness. Privileges that are given by governments and other man-made agents are part of a person’s conventional disabilities.

There are numerous huge mistakes that the supreme Court made with regard to race relations. To start with, the justices should never have tolerated slavery. From that reprehensible position, their decisions went downhill. Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson are monuments to the de facto Protestant establishment’s abuse of African-American rights. There are other decisions that show that other races and ethnic groups were abused. But after the New Deal, after private property was no longer properly defined, the Court shifted from abusing the rights of Blacks, Indians, Asians, etc., to abusing the rights of everyone. This new breed of abuse has been based on the idea that retribution and restitution can be executed with justice against people-groups. In wars, perhaps that’s true. But Jim Crow, "Black codes", etc., were not war by the entire nation. They were unjust laws perpetrated by specific States. Abuse of rights is abuse of rights, regardless of race or ethnic group, and it needs to be stopped, emphatically, by secular governments. Abusing everyone’s rights doesn’t help anyone.

One of the biggest mistakes the supreme Court made in the last century was to define private property in a way that makes it public, and in such a way as to create a "federal" commerce jurisdiction everywhere, even when "commerce" is nothing more than a private contract between private people. People who are engaged in private contracts are totally outside the lawful scope of secular social compacts. But, "During the fifty years following the post-New Deal era Congress expanded national regulation into myriad aspects of the national life, using the Commerce Clause as the constitutional base, all with the Supreme Court’s approval." 21 Every usurpation of the private property rights of people who live within the geographical jurisdiction of the united States is a violation of such rights, and is therefore bloodshed. But it’s helpful to see this general abuse of property rights from both a moral perspective, and from a more deterministic or fatalistic perspective.

"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade segregation in interstate commerce." 22 There’s no doubt that segregation based on race is stupid. People who are genuinely interested in progress – regardless of whether that progress is financial, commercial, religious, educational, or whatever – will go for that progress regardless of what another person’s race or ethnic group is. They will attempt to find the best people to work with, regardless of all other irrelevant factors. Even so, the way the free market works is that people get to choose whom they do business with, instead of having secular governments tell them whom they may or may not do business with. That’s a moral fact that should be a legal fact. But from a deterministic perspective, perhaps Jim Crow was so entrenched that the general government needed legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and similar legislation, to continue correcting the huge mistakes it made in the process of ridding the nation of slavery. — In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), the Court forced a segregationist motel to desegregate, based on the fact that it was located adjacent to Interstate 85, which was defined by law as a commercial, interstate thoroughfare. In Katzenbach v. McClung (1964), the Court forced a segregated barbecue restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama, to desegregate, even though it was eight blocks from a federal highway. Both of these cases relate both to the expansion of the commerce clause jurisdiction, and to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) the Court upheld the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when "all justices agreed Congress had Fifteenth Amendment power to suspend state-prescribed voter literacy tests and authorize the attorney general to appoint voting examiners in low turnout states." 23 — Since the 1960s numerous supreme Court cases have upheld such race-related cases, based both on the expanded view of the commerce clause, and not.

At what point do we decide that the deterministic attempts at remedying the injustices relating to slavery have run their course? When is this form of retribution over? One of the advantages of due process is that there is a clearly defined beginning and end to the retribution process. But this counter-racism racism seems to have no end. It seems to have become a permanent part of American jurisprudence. How can anyone claim that this is justice? It’s not. It’s extremely counterproductive, for everybody. The secular governments need to eliminate all these racially motivated, "affirmative action" violations of the equal protection clause. It’s not the job of secular social compacts to deal in non-contractual, non-bloodshed issues. Racism is a moral issue that is not an issue that should ever be included, by a secular social compact, within the subject matter of its jurisdiction.

What should Bible-believing Christians do regardless of what secular governments do? — God has called us to be a covenant-keeping people, meaning that we who volunteer to follow His ways voluntarily obligate ourselves to live in religious social compacts with one-another. For any Bible-believing Christian to be a racist is for someone to claim to be a Christian and to claim not to be a Christian at the same time. It’s hypocrisy on a stick. No Christian religious social compacts should tolerate it. But on the other hand, if some white supremacists, or black supremacists, or any other kind of hard-core segregationists, demand that their religious social compact maintain racist religious police powers, it should be recognized as legitimate, though stupid and immoral, for them to do so. It’s practically certain that Christian religious social compacts should maintain an attitude towards racial and ethnic minorities that is essentially corrective and affirmative to the decades and centuries of white-instigated racism. But that’s totally different from attempting to do the same by way of a secular social compact.

Summary Regarding the Emperor’s "parade":

Now that we’ve examined the parade of horribles, 24 it’s clear that the Court is seeing this "parade" strictly as defenders of the mega-state. After Boerne, the view of these issues from the hermeneutical prologue’s Biblical perspective is radically at odds with the Court’s. The justices of the supreme Court – in an attempt at retaining a blending of the de facto Protestant establishment, the de facto secular humanist establishment, and the agenda of the UN and the globalists – has set itself at odds with sound Biblical theology. Some of the justices have in some respects been trying to push religious police powers away from the general government, thereby forcing the States to take them. But States are also lawful only as secular social compacts, and there has been no recognizable grass roots development of lawful religious social compacts that could lawfully assume responsibility for such religious police powers. The nation is in a quandary. The quandary revolves around this question: Who, or what, best enforces religious police powers? The supreme Court justices who have voted relatively consistently for State’s rights, in essence, indicate that the States do. Those who have voted for religious liberty – or at least a compelling state interest test – have voted in essence for elevating individual liberty above the powers of either the general or the State governments. To many people, the latter justices are promoting secular licentiousness. Obviously we need some way curtailing libertine behavior. 25 The latter set of justices may claim that that’s not true, that we don’t need to curtail licentiousness. But the other camp is trying a remedy for licentiousness that is ineffectual, obsolete, and rife with abuse. Part of the remedy lies in recognizing that the States are secular social compacts as much as the general government is. To push religious police powers to them therefore makes no sense. If the nation is to be preserved, it’s imperative that people of all faiths compact themselves together within their respective faiths, and exercise religious police powers over their particular geographical jurisdictions, in whatever manner they see fit (assuming that they don’t perpetrate bloodshed). This would deliver the nation out of this quandary by relieving all secular governments of all responsibility for religious police powers. This inevitably requires that each religious social compact acquire genuine allodial title to the geographical territory over which it is to exercise its geographical jurisdiction. — No doubt this plan sounds like "pie in the sky" to many who hear of it. Such accusations have not deterred real Christians in the past. It should not deter us now. Bible-believing Christians need to develop genuine religious social compacts even if the nation is doomed as another Tower of Babel. All governmental decision-making needs to take place at the level of government where the most accurate and precise perception and definition of the action or property exists. These days, this automatically excludes secular governments in regard to religious subject matters.

At the local level, a huge obstacle to the formation of religious social compacts is the de facto abolition of allodial title. Most of the State constitutions in this nation contain clauses that guarantee that all land in the State’s jurisdiction is allodial. Boerne is proof that such land is not really allodial, in violation of the State’s constitution. The status of most land has been corrupted by a combination of the banking system, the monetary system, irresponsible mortgages, local powers to tax, zoning, feudal concepts of dominion and eminent domain (including the "doctrine of discovery" — See Johnson v. McIntosh, 1823.), and judicial sophistry at all levels. In some respects land has never been truly allodial. 26 Zoning officials – like those in Boerne – are now habituated to imposing their ordinances without sustainable opposition. They get away with practically whatever they want within their own fiefdoms. How can a religious social compact exercise its police powers if it’s beholden to such feudal strictures? It must follow biblical law with the sincere conviction, "Let justice be done though the heavens fall."

On top of all the problems with freely exercising our religion that are caused by the main three branches of government, which include this problem with allodial title, we have big and serious problems with the fourth, pseudo-constitutional branch. About half of all adjudication that’s done directly under the general government is done in administrative courts, rather than in judicial branch courts – in violation of the separation of powers doctrine. This means that any church that’s signed up with the secular government as a §501(c)(3) organization is especially vulnerable to police powers exercised by administrative agencies. Despite claims to the contrary, administrative agencies, especially the IRS, are sometimes used as political weapons. In other words, if a 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3) church has a dispute with government, there is a very real possibility that the IRS could be used by political hacks to crush the church’s opposition. 27 Unlike judicial branch cases, these are usually low profile cases that receive little or no recognition from local or national media. So very few people become aware of such abuses of power. — The bottom line is that any church that is, or ever has been, a §501(c)(3), has a status that is removed from a pure 1st Amendment church. The judicial branch often demands that parties pursue remedies at the administrative level before ever allowing a case to be heard by a judicial branch court. Over 99.9% of all churches are §501(c)(3) churches. They have a corrupted status like that of the Greek / Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviets. They are extremely vulnerable to control by the mega-state.

If you’ve read this far, then you probably understand that one of the most important things you can do to remedy these dismal circumstances is to get informed. Many of the remedies in secular governments have been exhausted, or are close to being exhausted. Christians whose efforts at remedy in the secular arena are exhausted must return to biblical law and abandon whatever hope they may have had in the secular system. There is essentially a pincer strategy that the Church needs to take in fighting the evil of our times. Those who have the calling should continue trying to transform the secular system to bring it into conformity with the hermeneutical prologue’s metaconstitution. Those who have exhausted their efforts in the secular arena, and are called to rebuild the Church from the grass roots, should do that instead. This pincer strategy is much like Nehemiah and his people rebuilding the walls of God’s city (Nehemiah 4:15-23), some people with weapons, some with tools, some with both.

Footnotes

1The End of Laissez-Faire, Part III.

2The End of Laissez-Faire, Part VI.

3This treatment of the "parade of horribles" was introduced at URL: ./0_8_3_Am_I_(Smith).htm​#ParadeOfHorriblesIntro.

4 To clarify the distinction between a pre-cognitive contract and a cognitive contract, read Porter, Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood.

5 A major step in that direction occurred when the general government sent the draft into dormancy in the 1970s. But people are still obligated to register, which means that the general government could bring the draft out of dormancy at its whim.

6 It’s important to emphasize that the U.S. military has rarely won in asymmetric warfare. A conventional military force against a population that is ideologically opposed to invasion by the U.S. military, and that only has small arms and paramilitary tactics in its favor, leaves a situation in which the U.S. can win only by perpetrating genocide. Although the U.S. military has approached such genocide in some of its unjust wars, so far, it has generally backed away from utterly obliterating the enemy population. The Vietnam War is a preeminent example.

7 For more about religious social compacts having jural societies armed to defend their community against external threats, see the 2nd Amendment. — URL: ./0_9_Am_II-IV.htm​#AmTwo. — Also see hermeneutical prologue, chapter 10, sub-chapter 4, section (vii), "The Militia, the Military, & Global Consolidation".

826 U.S.C. §501(c)(3), URL: https://www.law.cornell.edu/​uscode/​text/​26/​501.

9Article I §2 cl 3, URL: ./0_2_0_Art_I_Sec_1-7.htm​#Art1Sec2Cl3.

10 It must be understood that the kind of consent that’s most basic to the formation and functioning of secular social compacts is pre-cognitive. It’s therefore critical to have a clear understanding of the difference between cognitive consent and pre-cognitive consent. See Porter, Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood.

11 Modern American jurisdictions also often make a distinction between involuntary manslaughter and voluntary manslaughter, the absence of intent being the distinguishing feature. See West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2 (2008). — URL: http://​legal-dictionary.​thefreedictionary.com/​manslaughter, retrieved 15 October 2020.

12 Porter, Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood, p. 79.

13 Porter, Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood, pp. 90-91.

14 Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, pp. 100-101.

15 Porter, Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood, "Nullification of Pregnancy Pre-Cognitive Contract versus Transformation of It into Cognitive Bailment Contract".

16 Porter, Memorandum of Law & Fact Regarding Natural Personhood, pp. 98.

17URL: ./0_2_1_5_Art_I_Sec_8_Cl_6-18.htm​#Article1Sec8Cl7.

18If we weren’t speaking specifically about American jurisprudence, we might also include Antarctica.

19URL: ./0_8_3_Am_I_(Smith).htm​#ParadeOfHorriblesIntro.

20URL: ./0_8_3_Am_I_(Smith).htm​#ParadeOfHorriblesIntro.

21The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, pp. 168-169, "Commerce Power", by Robert J. Steamer.

22The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, pp. 833-834, "State Sovereignty and States’ Rights", by A. E. Keir Nash.

23The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, p. 400, "History of the Court: Rights Consciousness in Contemporary Society", by Stephen L. Wasby.

24URL: ./0_8_3_Am_I_(Smith).htm​#ParadeOfHorriblesIntro.

25Because there is so much confusion about such issues, it’s important to distinguish, in passing, libertarian behavior from libertine behavior. The former has a high view of human rights, while the latter is too preoccupied with sensual hedonism to hold this high view.

26We’ll examine this more fully when we study the 5th Amendment, URL: ./0_A_0_Am_V_(Intro).htm​#FifthAm.

2726 U.S.C. §501(c)(3), URL: https://www.law.cornell.edu/​uscode/​text/​26/​501.

 

 


 
 
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