Freedom to Tyranny: How serial terrorist attacks will change America forever – Part IV

In recent days Natural News editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, warned of a coming multi-city attack throughout the United States similar to the one that took place in Paris in November and in San Bernardino, Calif., in December. Bugout.news editor Jon E. Dougherty wrote a manuscript in 2006 examining the impact of multiple terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Americans’ constitutional rights and freedoms, a theme he continued in graduate school in 2014-15. This article is one of a series to be published over the course of several days that will provide readers insight into what they might expect in terms of reactions by federal and state governments if Adams’ prediction comes true, and if the premise of Dougherty’s research is confirmed.

(Bugout.news) In March 2002, I wrote in a column for WorldNetDaily.com that gun control, if carried to its maximum extent, would aid terrorists. I based my conclusions on a report in the Jerusalem Post which provided details about a foiled assault by a Palestinian terrorist on a crowded Israeli market by an “alert” and armed Israeli citizen. The citizen-shopper – a woman, by the way – recognized the mannerisms of the potential terrorist, who, it was later revealed, had “intended to detonate a small bomb in the supermarket and then blow himself up with the explosive belt when police forces came to the scene.”[1] The terrorist was shot dead before he could carry out his attack.

No question, there is probably no nation on earth more accustomed to fanatically inspired Islamofascist terrorism than Israel. But can you imagine an Israel where citizens were prohibited by law to assist in their own defense? Can you imagine an Israel where only the government is responsible for security and safety? Neither can most Israelis.

“As long as anti-gun groups, working in cooperation with the little Napoleons on Capitol Hill and in statehouses across the land, continue to favor laws that restrict the right of Americans to carry a weapon anywhere and everywhere, terrorists will be aided and abetted,” I wrote. “No one knows where the next terrorist strike will occur or what form it will take. Therefore Congress and the president could boost national security immensely just by dismantling goofy gun-control laws that do nothing but aid our enemies. A free people demand no less than the ability to help protect themselves and their country. A better-armed populace would do much to accomplish that goal.”[2]

Other researchers have come to the conclusion that, when juxtaposed with improving national security against terrorism, gun control is counterproductive. Gary Mauser, a professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, said that following a decade-and-a-half of research he concluded that “firearm ownership was a social good.” He also debunked the Canadian government’s efforts to exploit 9/11 to enact more gun control – specifically, by requiring every firearm in the country to be registered:

The treacherous attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 opened our eyes. Canadians now realize that our government can’t protect us. The government’s efforts to control violence have been badly misdirected. It was not wise to freeze the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] budget for a decade, slash CSIS [Canada’s equivalent of the FBI in the states], let violent criminals roam around on probation, and eliminate the Vancouver port police. And for what? To create a massive bureaucracy to register the guns of ordinary Canadian citizens. … The new bill to fight terrorism is deja vu. The government is exploiting the current tragedy to grab more power. The problem isn’t that government needs more laws, it’s that the government is afraid to enforce the ones it has. There is no need to sacrifice the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the government would focus on terrorists and violent criminals, not ordinary Canadians. We would all be safer if the government would have the courage to screen immigrants better, to vigorously deport security risks, and to keep violent criminals in jail longer. Sept. 11 frightened and confused us all. Nevertheless, it is important not to panic. We shouldn’t surrender our cherished individual freedoms in a rush to buy safety.[3]

Not Siding With the States

The Tenth Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

What that means, according to one legal definition, is that the amendment “provides that any powers not constitutionally delegated to the federal government, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved for the states or the people. It is a default provision – if the Constitution hasn’t addressed a particular power (either granting it to the federal government or denying it to the states), then the power belongs to the state.”[4] U.S. federal courts have defined the amendment as confirming “that the power of the Federal Government is subject to limits that may, in a given instance, reserve power to the States,” and that it encompasses “any implied constitutional limitation on Congress’ authority to regulate state activities, whether grounded in the Tenth Amendment itself or in principles of federalism derived generally from the Constitution.”[5]

However, another federal court decision says the Amendment, “from the beginning and for many years … has been construed as not depriving the national government of authority to resort to all means for the exercise of a granted power which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the permitted [426 U.S. 833, 863]  end.”[6] In other words, the Amendment was never intended to prevent the federal government from doing what it believed necessary to carry out its duty and function to protect and defend the country – and, ironically, the rest of the Constitution.

One of the entities some analysts believe has been taken away from states, despite the Tenth Amendment’s language and the fact that these entities were specifically created for the defense of each state, are National Guard units – state military forces which, in theory, would be needed to protect state citizens from overreaching federal authorities, even in times of crisis.

“A little-noticed change in federal law packs an important change in who is in charge the next time a state is devastated by a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina,” wrote Kavan Peterson, in a January 2007 article for Stateline.org, a publication of The Pew Research Center. “To the dismay of the nation’s governors, the White House now will be empowered to go over a governor’s head and call up National Guard troops to aid a state in time of natural disasters or other public emergencies. Up to now, governors were the sole commanders in chief of citizen soldiers in local Guard units during emergencies within the state.”[7]

As the article hints, the change in law evolved from a power struggle between President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D). In the days following Katrina, the city of New Orleans became a lawless wasteland; Mr. Bush sought to federalize the Louisiana Guard units but Ms. Blanco refused to relinquish control. The result has been disastrous for Tenth Amendment advocates and for state authorities.

“Over objections from all 50 governors, Congress in October tweaked the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to empower the hand of the president in future stateside emergencies,” Stateline.org reported. In a letter to Congress, the governors wrote the opposed the bill because it “would expand the President’s authority during natural and manmade disasters and could encroach on our constitutional authority to protect the citizens of our states.”[8] They also noted such “a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters … could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states’ ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders.”[9]

Worse, the change in law came as state governors were already upset over increased and repeated federal deployment of state Guard troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, in a bid to supplement federal active duty forces ordered there to wage the war on terror. “Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, four out of five guardsmen have been sent overseas in the largest deployment of the National Guard since World War II. Shortage of the Guard’s military equipment – such as helicopters to drop hay to snow-stranded cattle in Colorado – also is a nagging issue as much of units’ heavy equipment is left overseas and unavailable in case of a natural disaster at home,” Stateline.org reported.[10]

The bill could have been worse. The National Governor’s Association (NGA) managed to successfully lobby Congress to defeat a measure that would have given the president power to federalize state Guard troops without invoking the Insurrection Act. Nevertheless, the version of the law that did pass was still troubling to analysts.

“Governors need to be focused on assisting their citizens during an emergency instead of looking over their shoulders to see if the federal government is going to step in,” David Quam, an NGA homeland security advisor, said.

• Click here to ‘like’ Bugout.news on Facebook and never miss out on exclusive content and posts!

Go to PART I

Go to PART II

Go to PART III

[1] Jon E. Dougherty, “Gun control aids terrorism,” WorldNetDaily.com, March 1, 2002.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Gary Mauser, “Debunking the gun control myth,” Simon Fraser University News, November 15, 2001, Vol. 22, No. 6.

[4] “Tenth Amendment,” Endangeredlaws.com, accessed online at http://www.endangeredlaws.org/resourceguideglossary.htm.

[5] New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 157 (1992); and South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505, 511 n.5 (1988), respectively.

[6] United States v. Darby, 312 U.S., at 124.

[7] Kavan Peterson, “Governors lose in power struggle over National Guard,” Stateline.org, January 12, 2007.

[8] National Governor’s Association, letter to House and Senate congressional leaders, August 31, 2006.

[9] Peterson, “Governors lose in power struggle over National Guard,” Stateline.org.

[10] Ibid.