Inquisition 21
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Threats to liberty
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The greatest threat to the West comes not from Islamic fundamentalists but from its own repressive absolutist doctrines and systems of control.
Samuel Adams
The main threats to liberty
The main threat to our liberty
To help understand the reasoning here, first read ‘What is going on?’ at the top of the main menu on the left.
See also the drop down menu on the left for states of mind, the opportunists, mechanisms of repression, undesirable affects, what will be next and what we can do. Included there are the NGOs and censorship. These are all sub-sections of this article. See also the bottom of the page for extra articles.
The main threat to our liberty
The greatest threat to our liberty comes from state intervention. The state intervenes in our lives, no longer just to protect us from harm from others or to collect our taxes, but to control our lives and, increasingly, to control what it perceives to be the morality of those lives. In doing this, it looks not just to the maintenance of justice, but to the current moral ideology being put forward by whatever social faith-based system is in vogue, currently in the West the politically-correct social doctrines that match in fervour those of religious fundamentalists.
These ideological doctrines encompass sexual morality, utopian egalitarianism, and medicalization, and are moving to encompass ‘inappropriate expressions of opinions’ (such as those covered by incitement to hatred legislation) and ‘inappropriate social behaviour’. Already the last is resulting in children being removed from the homes of parents whose behaviour is deemed to be inappropriate by social workers, who police the ideology. ‘Political correctness’ tends to be the term used to describe acceptable moral and social behaviour. It now attempts to control both language and thought.
Increasingly, the thrust of state intervention has been marked by the control of citizens through both repressive laws and a prosecution-oriented judiciary. In the US for example, it might not be an exaggeration to say that defence lawyers in the main work for the prosecution by engaging in the charade known as plea bargaining.
While there may not be an organised cabal or one arising from a plan or a conspiracy to acquire power, a cabal nevertheless exists by virtue of good fortune and circumstances for the few who are the ‘right people in the right place’, who capitalise on the ideology and tainted system of justice.
The processes of the resulting inquisition are many and are listed in the main and sub menus on the left, but the main processes are the police and those in alliance with the police and the legal and judicial system which serves the current ideology more than it serves justice, the use of torture, most of it psychological in the West, such as plea bargaining or forced (compulsory) sexual therapy and counselling, which can also amount to brain washing.
It should be against the law to break the law
Extract from address by US Judge Andrew P. Napolitano “It should be against the law to break the law. Unfortunately, it is not. In early 21st-century America, a dirty little secret still exists among public officials, politicians, judges, prosecutors, and the police. The government, federal, state, and local, is not bound to obey its own laws. I know this sounds crazy, but too many cases prove it true. It should be a matter of grave concern for every American who prizes personal liberty.”
We must not relax our vigilance
Journalist Gary Borders, writing for The Lufkin Daily News says, “The First Amendment consists of a single 45-word sentence that protects a quartet of rights: freedom of religion; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; and freedom of assembly and petition.” He goes on: “Those of us who care about such matters can't relax our vigilance.”
He also reminds us that the only type of speech that gets you into trouble is unpopular speech. “After all, speech that everyone agrees with doesn't need protection. The Framers understood that it is the minority that needs protection, not the majority.”
The main threats to liberty
The prosecution state
We have a malevolent police and prosecution state, a judiciary deeply infected with moral ideology, a media that generates and fans witch hunts, and a cowed and nihilistic educated public.
Jeffrey Douglas, chairman of the Free Speech Coalition sees our age as ‘an incredibly dangerous time’. He says: "You just know high-ranking members of the Bush administration stay awake at night thinking that somewhere out there people are masturbating, and they have to do something to stop it." Read more in State intervention in menu on left. Read also there how Gore Vidal says that we are all cowed.
Stated at its bluntest, beginning with the US and some countries such as Sweden, we are moving towards a state where prosecutors prevail, where they are funded by the government through the taxpayer, and where, for reasons given below and elsewhere on this web site, defense is either highly difficult or virtually impossible – indeed, even illegal in a number of circumstances in the US, such as when one is denied access to evidence and the means to obtain it. When inquisitorial devices such as plea bargaining (extortion) go hand in hand with a ‘guilty unless proven innocent’ ideology, accusation becomes conviction, incarceration and condemnation.
Add to this a society with designated objects of hatred such as ‘sex offenders’, a range of offences and mandatory sentencing to deal with their crimen exceptum, and a growing list of acts of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ and limitations on what one can look at, read about, publish and even think about, we have a true state of Inquisition.
This situation has come about over the past 20 years. At a time when we in the West are all under threat from religious fundamentalism, and dearly want to protect our cherished liberty and justice from being wiped out under it, we find that both have already been eroded by our own form of social and religious fundamentalism and new inquisitorial regime. We may soon not have a way of life worth protecting.
The idea that our rights come from the state
The Western World has been polarizing into two opposing camps in the matter of individual rights. The first believes that man's rights are inherent within man's nature and come from God or from whatever divinity or evolutionary process gave us thought and imagination. These rights are not an arbitrary gift from the state to be withdrawn at the caprice of the rulers but are objective requirements for human beings if they are to live to their full potential and if humanity is to continue to evolve towards a greater plenitude. Therefore the laws made through legislation are subordinate to these natural rights and can only be justified in terms of man's nature, hence the name ‘Natural Law’. The man-made laws are attempts to codify the natural law, but any laws that are inconsistent with natural law may rightfully be struck down by judges. This philosophy is reflected in the tradition leading from ancient Greece through the Enlightenment, the French and American revolutions, the Founding Fathers, the creation of the modern democratic state and the idea that writers and their readers should be allowed freedom of thought and speech.
The second opposing view is that our rights are creations of the state and are not natural. They are grants of free action conferred upon individuals by a government representing a democratic majority. They may be increased, decreased, revised or removed at any time for any reason. All laws that are democratically passed are, ipso facto, proper laws and no law may be challenged on any but procedural grounds. This theory goes by the name of ‘Legal Positivism’.
This second belief has been gaining ground rapidly and is now so firmly entrenched as to alarm those concerned with maintaining freedom of thought and imagination. It may have received its first major stimulus from the emergence of the private automobile, and related road transport system, when governments had public safety reasons for introducing legislation to regulate drivers and driving, but it did not stop there, and the regulation of individual behaviour has been increasing and becoming more embracing ever since. While our physical world and its systems demanded regulation, the state was already interested in private morality, and it is in this sphere more than any other that individual liberty and freedom of thought are under threat.
A 2004 book, Constitutional Chaos (reviewed under ‘It should be against the law to break the law’ below), written by the American judge Andrew P. Napolitano has chillingly outlined the consequences of ‘Legal Positivism’, the acceptance that our rights are creations of the state. Writing about America, but it could be about all countries operating as western democracies, he reveals a pernicious and ever-expanding pattern of government abuse in the criminal justice system, leading him to establish his general creed that ‘the government is not your friend’. He baldly asserts that the state breaks the law to maintain the law and he speaks from his experience on the bench.
The acceptance of the state as the giver and controller of rights has led directly to police corruption, perjury, fabricated evidence, kidnap, entrapment, false witnesses, compensation claims, the victim culture, and our prosecution state. It has also led to physical and physiological torture and brainwashing. The state has become the guardian of an ideology, constructed by social engineers, not the guardian of justice.
One of the great Orwellian slogans of our times is ‘Those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear’.
By believing that slogan, we accept tyranny.
Constitutional Chaos can be purchased from Amazon.
Plea bargaining - the restoration of the Star Chamber
Thanks are due to Attorney Carl E. Person, editor of LawMall, for most of the information here. One should also read his full report on Plea bargaining.
The Court of Star Chamber, or Star Chamber, was abolished by the English Parliament in 1641, having become a reviled byword for unfair judicial proceedings. It has returned in the US, and to a varying extent elsewhere, through a pernicious combination of plea bargaining and sentencing guidelines. An excellent example of the kind of great injustice that plea bargaining can cause can be seen in the Jack story.
The Star Chamber was an Inquisition-type court in which so-called ‘criminal justice’ was administrated by the King, Council and/or officials, using no rules and guided only by political, religious or ideological motivations. It used torture and the death or other harsh penalties.
Carl E. Person describes the Council and Star Chamber as predecessors to our administrative agencies. This is so true where social workers with ideological agendas work hand in hand with police and prosecutors. He sees plea bargaining as torture through extortion - the threat of a long period of incarceration if the defendant does not plead guilty and accept a much lower sentence. He also points to the significant increase in the power of the prosecutor by the introduction of the system of Sentencing Guidelines, which are also now found for sex crimes in the UK and elsewhere. These set fixed sentences for judges, but can be lowered by extorting prosecutors through plea bargaining.
The results of the restored Star Chamber are frightening. It has resulted in the administrative resolution of 95-98% of all criminal matters in US federal courts today, with the safeguards of defense counsel, judge and jury no longer available. He describes this modern version of the Star Chamber as ‘the prevailing criminal court in the United States’, which is ‘causing the nation's citizens a loss of many of their Constitutional rights’. It has reduced the number of defense lawyers prepared to allow their clients go to trial, placed such huge financial burdens, through forfeiture and other restraints and abuses, on defendants that they can no longer afford to go to trial. In the few cases where one can afford it, one faces defense fees of up to $600,000. ‘Justice’ is therefore available to between 2 and 5% of the accused. If one looks at the stories on this web site, one will find the additional burden that prosecutors can now make it impossible for an accused to prepare for, or work at, his own defense, and it can be illegal to help an accused. Rounding off these unjust and wretched laws is the offer from the prosecutors to have one’s sentence reduced if one names or informs on others.
Where there are moral panics or a prevailing absolutist ideology in force, or even a ‘law and order’ regime, courts and judges tend to favor prosecutors, especially where judges are promoted prosecutors. The media and public will also hail them as maintainers of the moral order and punishers of perverts and inappropriate persons, who may also be heretics and other non-conformists or unbelievers.
Person makes the terrifying observation that ‘so far only 2.5 million Americans are incarcerated, which number has apparently not yet reached a critical mass’. He does mention another significant development, seen also in the UK and elsewhere, that a large number of intelligent people are becoming disenchanted with the law and the state. This is a very serious development for democracy and in the end of the day for so-called ‘law and order’.
We have allowed the emergence of a society in which the prosecutors reign supreme, and justice has become the maintenance of a system which upholds the privileges of a wealthy few and the dominant ideologies accepted by the masses.
The crimen exceptum
The crimen exceptum is the unassailable cause and designated perversion.
In many countries today, you simply have to listen to what they are chanting in the streets to know what is the current crimen exceptum or the unassailable cause and designated perversion. In Nazi Germany you also saw it on posters, in the breaking of windows, and the transports.
The story of 25 year old Irishman, Clifford T. Reid, who ran as a 2004 candidate in the European Parliament elections on a platform to ‘Stop the paedophiles’, and who posted his own picture on his paedophile posters, is told in Undesirable effects in menu on left.
Reid, who unfortunately for himself, but maybe not for the world, hoisted himself on his own petard, chose the most emotive current crimen exceptum or designated perversion, that of child sex abuse, which gives rise to the hatred of the ‘paedophile’. Other crimen exceptums of the recent and not too distant past have been ‘Reds under the beds’, the Jews in Nazi Germany, the crime against nature of homosexuality, and the witches and the infidels burnt at the stake. Islamic fundamentalists regard the people of the Christian West and Jews as ‘designated perverts’, whose very existence is the crimen exceptum justifying holy war and martyrdom.
The crimen exceptum is fundamental both to an inquisition and to demagoguery. Unless the demagogue can appeal to the prejudices and passions of the mob there can be no Inquisition, but demagoguery is merely a dramatic extreme of the uses of the crimen exceptum, which range from political and financial opportunism to racketeering.
Looking back over the crimen exceptums or designated perversions of history, few if any have been as powerful as that of child sex abuse, in particular in its form of child pornography. We have the designated state of purity, the innocence of childhood, and we have the monstrous perverts, the paedophile and the child pornography enthusiast who encourage the pervert to violate that archetypal image. Only the concept of Aryan purity that led to the genocide against the Jews and Gypsies approach them in their black and white simplicity.
In these considerations, it may help to leave aside for the moment any evaluation of the object giving rise to the crimen exceptum. During the 1930s in Germany one could not have publicly argued that the persecution of the Jews was not justified. Today, it is very difficult to argue about the rights and wrongs and extent of child sex abuse. What one could have done early in the German horror, however, and still has time to do now, although perhaps not much time, is to identify the traits and motivations of the activists and demagogues that demand the punishment of the perceived perpetuators of the crimen exceptum and to become empowered in the pursuit of this designated perversion. The zealots will not stop here and there are signs already that the crime of ‘inappropriate social behaviour’ is in their sights.
Thanks are due to Lynley Hood, author of A City Possessed (see Bookstore and Sex abuse) for the choice of the expression of crimen exceptum, which she found originated in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the authorities decided that witchcraft was a crimen exceptum, a crime distinct from all others, requiring exceptional counter-measures, including the suspension of certain legal protections and processes. She goes on: “With witchcraft as with child sexual abuse, the perpetuators and victims were rarely obvious. To identify them, special investigative techniques had to be devised and special investigators had to be trained in their use. To secure convictions special laws had to be passed.” Later she suggests that large numbers of highly educated ‘expert witnesses’ were used by the Inquisition to testify against the innocent accused.
As we ponder this, we might perhaps think about the highly questionable basis for psychology, not just that used by the therapists who caused so much mischief in the stories told under ‘Country by country’ or those who are practicing torture in sex offenders’ treatment programmes (see Sexual torture in main menu), but all psychology. Our Inquisition courts are guided by the dark ‘science’ of psychology and its practitioners. As with the Church and its doctrines in the 16th and 17th centuries, because they had no scientific foundation that could be tested, psychology and its psychologists stand firm and prevail even in the face of overwhelming evidence, thus ensuring grave injustice. Also, as with the ‘faith’ demanded by the earlier inquisition, psychology appeals to and demands a code of defined ‘appropriate’ or ‘normal’ behaviour. And like the Church it demands belief. Because of all this, it is opposed to the evolution of thought and change, especially excursions of the human imagination. The Internet may be its greatest enemy.
Religious fundamentalism
For an understanding of this complex subject that is central to our world one could read The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong, which can be found in the Bookstore in the menu on the left.
Here is on quote: “Fundamentalists do not regard their battle as a conventional political struggle, but experience it as a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil.” This is as true of the present US administration as it is of the so-called ‘terrorists’ they do battle with.
Karen Armstrong also explains the part played by the difference in ways of making meaning between mythos and logos. Mythos deals with meaning, with the timeless and constant, with the intuitive, with what can only be fully expressed in art or music or ritual. Logos, the mainly Western way, is the rational, the scientific, the practical, that which can make things work and be explained by science and logic.
The tyranny of good intentions
When Jack wrote to the US writer Paul Craig Roberts about the injustices he had experienced in the US, this was the reply he received:
Dear Jack,
I think all child porn sites are run by the police. Perhaps the browser hijackers are also police. I have no way to help you. The US has the largest prison population in the world, both in absolute number and as a percentage of the population. Amazing. I think most are innocent. Prosecutors and police justify their budgets with high conviction rates. Only 5% of cases go to trial. Rest are coerced pleas.
Paul Craig Roberts
If anyone still believes that we have been over-pessimistic on this web site, the above was written by a man whose work can be seen at Roberts, where he has an article tilted ‘Forgive Us Our Injustice System’. His book The Tyranny of Good Intentions can be found at Amazon.
Let’s reflect on this. Most of the child porn available to non-police has long ago either vanished or gone well underground – often literally, but the police who carry out stings use the huge hoards of mainly child nudity and erotica that they have seized for the stings they carry out to entrap people, and some of them use it for private extortion. This should surprise no-one. In some of the SEA countries where our writers have been at work, the prostitution industry itself is run by the local police and sometimes by powerful government ministers. We must also constantly remember that prosecutors and police are paid for by the state, so the adversarial system is hard wired against innocent citizens.
Here are some of Paul Roberts’ more disturbing findings: “Conservatives are right that the guilty often go free, but the reason is that the innocent are convicted in their place. Justice is no longer a concern of the justice system. Careers depend on conviction rates. It is easier for police and prosecutors to get convictions by piling charges on a convenient suspect until they coerce a plea than to solve a case and find the truth.
Editor. We can add that the judicial system is used to uphold and maintain the social ideology, not justice.
“Mary Sue Terry, former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia, has this to say: ‘Our concern has turned from seeking truth to seeking convictions, and our post-conviction efforts are focused on denying any further review’.”
In their co-authored book The Tyranny of Good Intentions Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a ‘police state that is creeping up on us from many directions’. The plea bargain has been ‘turned into an enemy of the truth’. There is ‘outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects’. The authors suggest that America, barring ‘an intellectual rebirth’, may yet go the way of German Nazis and Soviet communists.
Milton Friedman called the book ‘a devastating indictment of our current system of justice’. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. “A thousand years of legal protections against tyranny are being stolen right before our eyes. Under the guise of good intentions, personal liberties as old as the Magna Carta have become casualties in the wars being waged on pollution, drugs, white-collar crime, and all of the other real and imagined social ills. The result: innocent people caught up in a bureaucratic web that destroys lives and livelihoods; businesses shuttered because of victimless infractions; a justice system that values coerced pleas over the search for truth; bullying police agencies empowered to confiscate property without due process.
” - - - the law, which once shielded us from the government, has now become a powerful weapon in the hands of overzealous prosecutors and bureaucrats. Lost is the foundation upon which our freedom rests - the intricate framework of Constitutional limits that protect our property, our liberty, and our lives. Roberts and Stratton convincingly argue that this abuse of government power doesn't have ideological boundaries. Indeed, conservatives and liberals alike use prosecutors, regulators, and courts to chase after their own favourite ‘devils’, to seek punishment over justice and expediency over freedom. The authors present harrowing accounts of people both rich and poor, of CEOs and blue-collar workers who have fallen victim to the tyranny of good intentions, who have lost possessions, careers, loved ones, and sometimes even their lives.
”This book is a sobering wake-up call to reclaim that which is rightly ours - liberty protected by the rule of law.” Buy it at Amazon.
Other links: ‘Truth in Justice’ is an educational non-profit organized to educate the public regarding the vulnerabilities in the U S criminal justice system that make the criminal conviction of wholly innocent persons possible. Find it HERE.
(The following sections are also in the drop down menu on left:)
The main threats to liberty below
What has brought us here
States of mind
The opportunists
Mechanisms of repression
Undesirable affects
What will be next?
What we can do
Threats to liberty
Samuel Adams on liberty
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