Murthy v. Missouri and the Constitution
Now Can We Stop Pretending It's a Legitimate Government?
First Let’s Stop the Idol Worship.
I first took the Bar 25 years ago this week (June 1999) and, just like the other times in my life I’ve played Charlie Brown to someone else’s Lucy, I genuinely believed I would kick the football this time. And, just like the other times in my life, I was left to reconsider my choices while staring up at the sky - the ball having been snatched away along with my breath after landing on my back with a sickening thud. The good news is that although I may be stupid, I make up for it by being slow.1
Roughly twenty-five years I’ve been practicing law and a big chunk of it (20+ years) as a military criminal defense attorney. I can still remember the first time I sat next to my defendant client in a courtroom and the bailiff called the case name, which in all military cases is “the United States versus” [insert accused name here]. That’s when it first hit me, and hard: I looked over to the prosecutor’s table and saw the trial counsel, an assistant trial counsel, and two paralegals behind the bar waiting for instructions. On our side was my client, me, and a legal pad with a pen sitting on it.
C’est ca. Rien de plus.
I remember trying not to gulp, or appear nervous, while I could feel my client’s leg bouncing up and down. You and me both, buddy, I said only to myself. I have never felt so alone in my whole life.
In the two-plus decades I’ve spent defending clients around the world against the U.S. government, my greatest single shield and weapon has been the tattered remnants of the United States Constitution. I used to carry a copy in my pocket when I was a pilot. Some guys I flew with would tease me about it when they found out, but I figured that since I had sworn on my sacred honor to defend it - with my life, if necessary - “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” that I should probably at least take a look at the damn thing and see what it said. So, on those occasions when my helicopter broke down or I was stranded somewhere with nothing else handy, I would break out my pocket Constitution and start reading, making mental notes where I had questions, terms I didn’t understand, or historical oddities that had been rendered obsolete by amendment.
For the most part, that ragged parchment served my clients well. And over time, I came to have a certain reverence for it. If I’m being completely honest, I had enough success that reverence slipped into idolatry. I didn’t really appreciate how sinister that was until I had what I will euphemistically call a “spiritual awakening” at middle age. Call it a mid-life crisis if you like and chortle about it, but the ekstasis I went through2 was sufficient to call everything in my life into question - and I mean everything. Everything I’d done or believed in was stripped away and I was left a naked soul alone before my Maker.
You’ve Been Bamboozled. Admit It.
The secular humanist, Materialist3 indoctrination at the heart of the U.S. education system is in all ways a religion - and always has been.4 It’s great lie is that it is not. Instead of being bound by “superstition” and other such “religious nonsense”, children are lied to and told fairy tales about their government - for just one example, that it is a representative democracy.
But the cold Truth is that the government is neither theirs, (nor yours), nor in any sense representative. And it hasn’t been in more than a 100 years.
Did you vote for the government to censor Facebook posts? To close down debate in the public square of Twitter for opinions disfavored by your government? The New York Post was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton - it’s as “mainstream” a media outlet as a newspaper could be in these united States - and it got shut down on Twitter because it dared to publish damning information on the Commander in Chief’s crackhead son (and bagman). Not coincidentally, the contents of that laptop would be enough to send you and your family to the gallows as traitors, but so far has resulted in laughable charges for lying on an ATF form.
Did you vote for Covid lockdowns? For the cratering of the economy and the destruction of small businesses by fiat? Did you vote for mandatory injection with a DoD-funded experimental gene-therapy upon pain of losing your job or - if you were in the military - being thrown in jail?
Are you seeing it yet?
Today and tomorrow, many so-called “right wing” pundits and “thought leaders” will be telling you what Murthy v. Missouri means and almost none of them will be telling you the cold Truth because they need you to continue believing in the Myth of Representative Democracy - they need your idolatry to continue making the machinery of government work.
I, on the other hand, am glad the Supreme Court has ruled as atrociously as it has through Amy Coney Barrett, a middling intellect on her brightest day. Watch the wailing and gnashing of teeth tomorrow, and in the following days, all of the other stages of grieving. Note especially those who claim to be “religious” going through all manner of logical circumlocution to avoid telling you this simple Truth because of their idolatry: the United States - written on that vellum and signed by the Founding Fathers - is as dead as the men who wrote it.
A lot better writers than I have already said this, many times over, so I’m not claiming to offer some new insight or great analysis of the Supreme Court’s sophistry - because that’s all it is. Nor am I here to tell you that the dissent got it “correct” and why because none of it matters. Not Trump winning the election in November, nor Congress turning red, and certainly not a few “good” decisions of the black-robed Pharisees are going to save this Nation and its Charter.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.
It’s Time to Give Up Childish Ways & Get Over It. I Know This Is Difficult.
Only a Great Turning Away from idol worship of government will suffice. It starts in the Home with a repentant heart - and here I’m talking about the genuine article, typically reserved for those facing impending demise - and not various forms of public self-flagellation. Then… beseech your ancestors, your higher self, your lord and savior Jesus Christ, Vishnu, the Buddha Nature, or whatever higher power to which you cast your Fate, and beg for the strength necessary to do what must be done to build yourself back in True Faith. But whatever you do, I humbly ask you to give up your idols of Education, the Enlightenment, Liberalism, “Progress”, Materialism, “the rules based order,” SCOTUS decisions, the return of Cheeto Hitler, and/or whatever other ideology you think is going to return Heaven on Earth.
Because. it. ain’t. gonna. happen.
Let Murthy v. Missouri mark the end of our idolatry in USG - and even the US of A - and the beginning of our belief in something better and truer… and better because it is Truer. I promise you, there is something better. And it’s not found on old pieces of paper of any kind. It is found written in the human heart by something greater than any of us individually of which you are an infinitesimally-small-but-infinitely-valuable piece. It is found in the love of a mother for her child, of a husband for his family, and in those who have known true forgiveness of their trespasses by others and learned how to truly forgive themselves and others.
We may have to endure some hard times before we can build anew, but so be it. That will not come any sooner, however, with the hope and copium of those still clinging to their false idols.
I can’t remember where I first heard this, but it is not an original line.
Because I am, if nothing else, a product of my rationalist upbringing, I felt compelled to see if I could repeat the experience without the use of mind-altering substances. It turns out, if ye really seek, ye really shall find - even without the aid of ayahuasca, bufo, or psilocybin.
There are other terms you can use here, including “liberal”, “rationalist,” “progressive” and on and on. I am referring to a belief that John Carter of Barsoom has brilliantly decried to as “the eye at the end of time.”
It may take more than a generation or two to see a change :(
If it's just a procedural thingy, there is possibility for a future lawsuit. Right? Maybe the New York Post can claim standing. After all, it was the scoop of the 21st century.
In the meantime, it's simply time to build digital infrastructure which isn't based in the greater San Francisco area. With modern technology, you don't need demon possessed posthumans in order to build a social networking application. (With PHP or Ruby on Rails, demonic assistance is perhaps necessary...)
PM me if you are interested in my own project in this regard. (Gotta keep certain brands separate, so a PM is necessary.)