Brunson: “Justice Jeffrey Doe” Adds to The Dissent

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

Editor’s Note: In her 26 February 2023 article, Mary Maxwell played the part of a fictitious Justice Henry Doe, writing a dissent in the SCOTUS case of Brunson v Adams. In this article, she plays the part of Justice Jeffrey Doe. None of it should be construed as official.

The United States Supreme Court

Petition for Certiorari in Brunson v Adams, 22-380

Justice Jeffrey Doe joins Justice Henry Doe’s dissent to the court’s majority opinion and adds to it.

I respectfully join Justice Henry Doe’s dissent, especially for his crucial recommending that this court request the appointment of a special master to look into a possible covert enemy in the 2020 presidential election. I now add to the dissent a discussion of oaths of office, a review of international jurisprudence regarding coups d’etat, an endorsement of the idea that we, sua sponte, reconsider some of our past rulings, a presentation of hope, and a constitutional look at private militias.

When I awoke this morning, a line from an old poem was going through my head: “In youth it sheltered me, and I’ll protect it now.” This comes from “Woodman, Spare That Tree” (1837), by George Pope Morris. It must have been that my conscience, during the night, was telling me to take a maximally patriotic position in this dissent addendum.

Oaths

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Jane Doe reviewed the history of oaths. The word oath has changed a few times, and no longer carries the idea in our society that God will step in to punish a person who makes a false oath. Without this threat of divine retribution, it is hard for the mere words “I swear” to do the job of scaring a potential liar — people commit perjury with impunity.

Unfortunately, we judges have been significant dispensers of that impunity. The word impunity means “no punishment.” It is up to us, at a trial, to decide if perjury has been committed and refer the perjurer to law enforcement.  And if there appears to have been someone who suborned the perjury, a court should ask the prosecutor to hunt her down. Sir William Blackstone tells of the range of punishments for suborning:

“Subornation of perjury is the offense of procuring another to take such a false oath…. The punishment has been various. It was anciently death; afterwards banishment, or cutting out the tongue, then forfeiture of goods; and now it is fine and imprisonment, and never more to be capable of bearing testimony. But the statute 5 Eliz. c. 9. inflicts the penalty of perpetual infamy, and a fine of 40£ on the suborner; and to stand with both ears nailed to the pillory.”

In Petitioner’s pleadings, the main concern with oaths is the oath of office, which differs greatly from taking an oath to swear the truthfulness of testimony. It is a promise about one’s future behavior.  Article VI says, “The Senators and Representatives … and all executive and judicial Officers … shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this Constitution….” Brunson rightly points out that the claim “[they] shall be bound” has to mean something. It cannot mean nothing.

Jurisprudence of coups d’etat

Petitioner also wants immediate punishment for those who may have caused a coup to happen. This is a very complicated matter. Professor Tayyab Mahmud has asked: Are perpetrators of coups d’etat guilty of treason? Can they be tried and punished? Does the constitutional order of a nation survive a coup? What is the source of legislative power, post-coup? Can the courts validate usurpation of constitutional power? Mahmud covers this in a 1994 article in the Cornell Law Review, intriguingly entitled “Jurisprudence of Successful Treason: Coup d’Etat & Common Law.”

In raising this analysis, I am by no means positing that a coup occurred in 2021 in the United States. I am dealing with Petitioner’s notion of the binding quality of an oath. In his pleadings, he jumps ahead of the above questions by quoting the Fourteenth Amendment, which says:  “No person shall be [allowed to] hold any office …  who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” Indeed, Brunson asks us to remove from office any such persons. He omitted the further clause, sec 3: “But Congress, may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

The Fourteenth Amendment came about in regard to members of the Confederacy in states that had seceded. Many rebels were charged with the crime of treason but a presidential pardon was granted after the war, in 1868.

Professor Tayyab Mahmud, who is from Pakistan, surveyed the range of judicial responses made to coups d’etat from 1958 to 1983. He refers to Hans Kelsen’s theoretical work on coups. Kelsen had drafted the constitution of Austria in 1920, which, interestingly, has a court whose task is to consider the constitutionality of any Austrian law. In regard to a violent change of government, Kelsen’s view is pragmatic: the efficacy of a coup bestows validity. Mahmud, in his 1994 article examined coups in common law countries, that is, former British-run states. He found that judges had ruled in four ways: validation and legitimation of usurpation, strict constitutionalism, resignation of office, and declaration of the issue to be a non-justiciable political question.

In Pakistan in 1958 the incumbent, President Mirza, expected to lose the next election. He thus abrogated the Constitution, dissolved the National and Provincial Assemblies, and declared martial law, putting the military in charge. The Chief Justice, in State v Dosso, bowed to Kelsen’s theory: the winning of the coup legitimizes it. This reminds one of

Sir John Harington’s epigram “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

In Uganda in 1966, the coalition government of President Milton Obote, and military man Idi Amin, were facing corruption charges. On February 26, Obote suspended the National Assembly. On April 15, the Assembly was reconvened to draw up a new constitution that provided for an executive presidency. There was a habeas corpus case, Uganda v Matovu concerning a county chief, that gave the High Court a chance to evaluate the legitimacy of the new government. It referred to a large number of affidavits by citizens agreeing with the new set-up and it cited the international practice of noting how many foreign countries had recognized the takeover. It ruled similarly to Pakistan’s Dosso case, along Kelsen lines.

Grenada had become independent of Britain in 1974 but kept the Queen as monarch and the Governor General as viceroy, as in Canada and Australia. In a coup against the notoriously corrupt prime minister Sir Eric Gairy, a left-wing group assumed power as the People’s Revolutionary Government, the PRG. The queen remained Head of State. In 1983, following dissension within the PRG, the prime minister was killed.  The United States Army invaded, ostensibly to protect Americans attending medical school in Grenada, after which the British Governor General assumed control.

In Grenada’s High Court, Chief Justice Nedd noted that the new regime was popular. He listed four conditions for a revolution to become valid: that it was successful, with no rival was contending, that the people were obeying the new mandates, that this was due to popular support not submission to fear of force, and it must not appear that the regime was oppressive.

None of this early jurisprudence can help Petitioner’s “oath of office” matter,  as such.  It does not say anything germane to our Fourteenth Amendment’s section 3 prohibition on rebels or insurrectionists being able to return to office. It does not clarify the way in which an oath binds the oath-taker.  But here is another fine point of law that Petitioner’s case brings up. Brunson says that those who violated their oath of office by failing to conduct an investigation in 2020, or, by not refusing to certify some state’s electoral ballots in 2021, committed treason “against the Constitution.”

Although the Framers wrote Article III’s definition of treason in a very tight way, to make “warring against the United states” a needed particular of that crime, I think it is reasonable to say that warring on the Constitution is the same thing. Is not the United States the Constitution? Sir Walter Scott wrote, in his Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, in 1828: “To plunder the nation of their privileges as freeborn men was the act of a parricide [one who kills his parent]. The nation lost under Napoleon’s successive encroachments, what liberty the ancient government had left them, and all those rights, which had been acquired by the Revolution.”

Isn’t that where we are headed? And if it is, wouldn’t it be malfeasant for this High Bench to pretend not to see it? Scott continues: “Neither in the manners nor in the laws, did there remain any popular means of resisting the errors or abuses of the administration. … Napoleon destroyed successively every barrier of public liberty, while he built new state prisons, and established high police, which filled France with spies and jailors…”

Kelsen’s observation that “who wins, wins” does not seem a satisfactory ending for our great republic. And consider the role of truth, or should I say, the role of deception. Scott said: “In his public capacity, he had so completely prostituted the liberty of the press, that France could know nothing whatever but through Napoleon’s own bulletins. The battle of Trafalgar was not hinted at till several months after, and then it was totally misrepresented….  As a periodical publisher of news, Napoleon became so eminent for [hiding the truth], that, to ‘lie like a bulletin,’ became an adopted expression.”

The majority opinion in Brunson correctly says: “Truth is essential to the carrying out of the law. If everyone lies, for her own selfish interest, no coordination can occur, no social order, only violence. It was recently revealed that the power that has been curtailing freedom of speech is none other than the United States government in a conspiracy with Twitter, Facebook, and so forth. How can one make truth emerge where the nation’s own weapons are set against it? … Lying to the court is perjury and is a crime. It may be that ‘national security’ itself is one of those lies…. Generations from now, people will wonder how the brilliant Constitution, the holy Scripture of Americans, was nor protected. It could be that there is an enemy. Petitioner Brunson boldly states this, without defining it.”

All American thinkers should now be asking: Will we succumb to the law of necessity, as in Kelsen’s pragmatic statement?  Wasn’t it the whole thrust of the American Revolution that humans can think of a potential reality higher than the raw facts of power? There may or may not have been a coup d’etat committed in 2021, but for certain there is an ongoing attempted coup of all countries by the globalist bullies.  For example, Klaus Schwab, head of the private group World Economic Forum, predicts: “You will own nothing and you will be happy.” Experts in Artificial Intelligence are telling us that we will no longer own our own mind; it will be merged into “the Internet of Things.” The very government of the United States is destroying the first principle of free thought by cancelling publication of dissident opinion. Did not Tom Paine risk his life for us?

Reconsidering old cases

As to the matter of reconsidering old cases, Justice Henry Doe’s dissent opens a rich area for us to work on. Naturally, it would be unwise for courts to toss out the important concept of stare decisis — people do want finality. But that policy is based on practicality, it is not on an ideal. Our ideal is justice, always justice. Even when we fail to achieve it, it is still necessary for people to know that that’s the direction we are headed in. To evince abandonment of that ideal is itself a crushing blow to society. I think we must take judicial notice of the way in which this High Bench’s wrong rulings have engendered despair and fear.

As described in this dissent, an entire ethnic group, Japanese Americans, had to wait from 1942 to 1986 to get resolution of an injustice; they were glad when the case of Hirabayahi was reopened. And the Innocence Project has paved the way for release of several wrongly convicted prisoners.  In the Reynolds case, however, three families have had non-satisfaction for 70 years, and counting.  In 1951 the prosecutor gave them wrong information, about a plane crash; he supported the Air Force’s story that data had to be concealed or a state secret would be in jeopardy.

As of 1995, when records were declassified, it was revealed that no state secret had been involved, yet this court has not been moved by the plaintiffs’ pleas. In addition to frustrating them, we have contributed to upsetting the balance of power, by conspicuously deferring to the military. Even in the lower court adjudication of Reynolds, the judge could have asked to see the material in camera but did not. Why do we feel that intergovernmental courtesy is a priority? For the Framers, intergovernmental turf warfare was fine.

Another old case which reaches the level of scandal is that of Troy Davis who was executed on September 21, 2011 at age 44. While he was on Death Row, six of the prosecution’s witnesses recanted their testimony, saying that it was obtained by police threats, a well-known phenomenon. We sent the case back to Georgia’s court for a review of the recantations by Judge Moore, which we then accepted despite it looking anything but impartial. Here are excerpts of the recantations by two witnesses, Antoine Williams and Dorothy Ferrell describing, in 2011, their 1991 testimony:

Antoine Williams: “They asked me to describe the shooter and what he looked like and what he was wearing. I kept telling them that I didn’t know. It was dark, my windows were tinted, and I was scared. …. After the officers talked to me, they gave me a statement and told me to sign it. I signed it. I did not read it because I cannot read.”

Dorothy Ferrell: “From the way the officer was talking, he gave me the impression that I should say that Troy Davis was the one who shot the officer …. I also felt like I had to cooperate with the officer because of my being on parole…. The truth was that I didn’t see who shot [the victim].”

Now here are excerpts from Judge Moore’s review:

Re Antoine Williams: “Saying that one cannot remember his prior testimony is different from admitting that it is false. He also contradicted his testimony regarding feeling pressured at trial during cross-examination: ‘Q: But it’s your testimony the police never pressured you to say anything in those two statements from August? —A. Ma’am, nobody never pressured me, ma’am. Q: And nobody suggested for you to say anything specific? A: No, ma’am, never.’ First, it is not proper to consider Mr. Williams’s testimony a recantation— he never indicated that his earlier statements were false, only that he can no longer remember what he said…. Second, Mr. Williams testified that his prior testimony was never coerced by state officials. [That] accords with the record; Mr. Williams’s statements were far from ideal and if the State was to coerce testimony, it surely would have coerced testimony more favorable than that actually provided.”

Re Dorothy Ferrell: “At the evidentiary hearing, Ms. Ferrell did not testify at all, and Mr. Lawton was never questioned regarding inducements to Dorothy Ferrell. Even if the letter was sent, there is no evidence that Mr. Lawton offered any inducement to Ms. Ferrell in exchange for her testimony…. Moreover, much of Ms. Ferrell’s affidavit testimony was directly contradicted by credible, live testimony at the hearing. Officer Ramsey testified that he never coerced her testimony in any way or suggested what the contents of her testimony should be.”

An emeritus professor of law at the University of Georgia, Donald Wilkes, wrote: “I am concerned about the judge’s practice of methodically accepting the police versions of disputed events while simultaneously rejecting citizens’ versions of these events. This verges on what is called “copsuckery” — slavish or excessive deference to law enforcement personnel — and may be another manifestation of regulatory capture in the criminal justice system, under which many judges view themselves not as protectors of the rights of citizens but as cheerleaders for police and prosecutors.”

I believe the nation would rejoice if we showed humility and honesty as never before, if we announce a policy of correcting mistakes. It will revitalize America, and our watchers from abroad.

Specifically as an antidote to the fast-moving increase in surveillance and digitalization that is stripping everyone of privacy, we should reopen the 2012 ruling in the case of Albert Florence. He was arrested for a traffic violation, taken to jail, and subjected to a humiliating strip search. Our court, again showing courtesy to another part of government, ruled that the searches are needed for the protection of the jail’s personnel. No, the person in need of his rights was Albert Florence, per the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons … against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”

Hope for the piece of paper

The Constitution is only a piece of paper, as some say. Yes, it is only a piece of paper, but what a powerful piece of paper when the promises on it are lived up to! Petitioner criticizes our use of legalese. Indeed we have become boxed in by our adherence to our own fussy rules. Some of the maxims are calling for our attention:

The reason of the law is the life of the law. Ratio legis est anima legis.

A good judge decides according to equity and right, and prefers equity to strict law. Bonus judex secundem quequum et bonum judicat, et aequitatem stricto juri praefert.

Nature aspires to perfection; so does the law. — Natura appetit perfectum, ita et lex.

He who cannot be known from himself may be known from his associates. — Noscitur ex sociis, qui non cognoscitur, ex se.

He who spares the guilty punishes the innocent. — Qui  parcit nocentibus,  innocentes punit.

I think we in this court have the power to stand up against torture, by using ‘the piece of paper.’ George Orwell revealed in his novel 1984 the plan that is being made for our future: The torturer in Room 101 said: “Obedience is not enough… Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing minds to pieces …. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? … A world of fear and treachery, a world of trampling and being trampled upon…. The old civilization claimed that they were founded on love and justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.”

Although we are unable to make retroactive protection of Orwell’s people, we can act on matters now before us.  The torture at Guantanamo has come before us several times, as in Hamdan, 2006. The following is an official log of interrogation, from 2002, on Detainee 063:

“0225 [a.m.]: The detainee arrives at the interrogation booth at Camp X-Ray. His hood is removed and he is bolted to the floor. … The detainee refuses to look at [female] Sgt A “due to his religion.” This is a rapport building session. 0240: Detainee states he’s on hunger strike. Sgt A explains the effects of a hunger strike on the body. Sgt A runs “love of brothers in Cuba” approach. 0320: The detainee refused to answer whether he wanted water. Sgt R explained with emphasis that not answering disrespects Sgt A and embarrasses him. 0540: Sgt A begins 9/11 theme. The detainee asks to pray and is refused. 0620: Interrogators take break to discuss theme. 0630: Interrogation resumes. Sgt A continues with 9/11 theme ….”

Any American could ask “How can the justices not react to such a thing? The likelihood that Detainee 063 played a role in 9-11 is negligible. So what is the purpose of torturing him? The answer may well be that the purpose is to train these soldiers in methods of reducing a human to an animal, or it may be to teach the public that nothing can be done. And in that area, the message may be that no judge is able to be a great judge anymore. Judges can only do the legalese thing, and ideals can’t come into play because they are only a piece of paper.

The Brunson pleadings claim that the object principle of justice “infuses our court system to be the most highly respected and dearly admired court system greater than the world has ever seen.” That’s true, but power, naked power, is also working to oppress us here in this very court. And the public is at least vaguely aware of it. As far back as the 1990s, Sherman Skolnick ran a “Citizens Committee To Clean Up the Courts.” Here was an interview:

Citizen’s Committee Your Honor, tell us what happened.

Chief Judge: I went to the top officials of the DEA and FBI.  I gave them specific details.  Instead of helping me they joined with the criminals to threaten me.  So now the dopers are running my courthouse.

Citizen’s C’tee:  Maybe I can suggest someone who would publicize this.

Chief Judge:  For the sake of my family, I want no publicity.  I need help.

Chief Judge [when we met again]: I resigned.  My family was in danger.

Let us try to get out of this position while it is still possible to do so. The Constitution is ours for the flaunting. Legal scholar Philip Allott of Cambridge UK, releases us from bondage in his 2016 book, Eutopia. He notes that to get from Istopia to Eutopia we pass through Knowtopia. “Over the course of millennia in countless different cultures, the human mind and the human will have been wonderfully creative and ingenious and bold in responding to challenges. Humans have absolute power over the human condition. We made it as it is. We will make it as it will be.”

It’s hard to argue against that statement.  Allott even says we should invent ceremonies to worship our marvelous neurons. So, then why have we all gone shy? Partly, he thinks,  because so much knowledge is now accumulated and can be had at the touch of a button. “Acquiring knowledge is no longer a crucial, and exciting, form of human experience We are alienated from knowledge because of its immensity and availability.” The fact that it is stored lessens our capacity to think. Allott also sees a decline in what used to be called ‘general knowledge — as a shared knowledge-base of collective human life and discourse.

He ends his book, the work of a lifetime in the field of law and diplomacy, with the observation that “The power of science and engineering is now so great that humanist thinking struggles to be heard.” Is this not true of American courts?

Having now added to the dissent with ideas about oaths, cops, reconsidering cases, and hope, I must address Petitioner’s reference to violence.

Militias in the Constitution

Petitioner seeks punishment for various members of government who, he says, committed both treason and fraud. Let us see what the Constitution has to say about laypersons “taking the law into their own hands.” First, we can ask, What is the Constitution? The one written in the United States in 1787 was the first of its kind. It grew out of three things: the settlement of the American colonies by England’s authorization, starting at Jamestown in 1607, a declaration of independence from England dated July 4, 1776, and a formation of a group called The Continental Congress which united all 13 states into what might be called a nation and wrote Articles. After that there was a decision by some leaders, not strictly authorized by the Continental Congress, to meet and draft a constitution. Each state sent a delegation to that event in Philadelphia in June 1787. James Madison, age 36, chaired the meeting.

Among the things not yet available in 1700s were: cars, typewriters, trains, telephones, indoor plumbing, ballpoint pens, and moving pictures. To get from A to B you would ride a horse. The population size was about one-three-hundredth of what it is today. But thinking was readily engaged in, and the Old Country had provided ideas such as those of John Locke and David Hume, as to the possibilities for designing a government. The men at Philadelphia put together, on parchment, a government that would require election to the position of representative and appointment by the states of two senators each. The states would elect the national president and a supreme court would deal with “cases and controversies.” People would have clearly defined rights.

From that moment on, intellectual “realities” were entering our environment. These include: a state, a nation, a favoring of self-government, accountability of representatives to their district, authority of the Constitution itself — as would be supervised by a court if controversies arose, and “a people” made up of farmers, artisans, professionals, etc. The rights and wrongs that were an established part of the culture did not get newly identified.

It may matter a lot, when we create a world of realities intellectually, if we miss naming something that that is there in the room but which no one moves to debate. In 1787 we neglected to articulate the fact that some people are bullies and plunderers. To some extent, this unspoken fact was catered for by checks and balances in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson opined that the most powerful branch of government might be the judiciary. If the United States were a theocracy, that could have happened, as people can rally emotionally around God’s word, and/or get excited over any issue involving blame.

We know today that not only are there individual personalities with a bent for aggression and selfishness, but it can be it be institutionalized. Many organizations today are huge and many are sneaky. This results in each person having no say in the structure of the whole thing. In 1787, we knew who was making the structure and on what justifications. Today we are atomized. None of us farmers, so to speak, can even make decisions about our own farming business.  Possibly we, in a referendum, would vote for a different kind of justification for governmental power than that of the Madisons, Jeffersons, and Adams’s.

At the moment we must deal with what we’ve got. Petitioner is happy to claim that the Constitution is good enough and that its wording is sufficient to deal with traitors whom he sees occupying 385 of the 535 seats of Congress, that is about 72%. He wants them removed from their positions, a seemingly reasonable request if they are guilty.  Part of the Constitution’s promise is that Rule of Law will prevail. The mechanism for this is in Article II, section 3: The president “shall take care that the laws are faithfully executed.”

The president must keep his oath of office. The wording is in Article II, sec 1: “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. …” How do we hold him/her legally accountable? Mainly at re-election time — though we know there are electronic ways to rig an election. If he/she does bad things during term, what does the parchment advise? It advises that Congress impeach.  If Congress won’t do that, say, for partisan reasons, and if his/her behavior is criminal, the president can be arrested in any state (he/she is not royal or sacred) or by the Executive branch, by the Attorney General.

Actually, a citizen can arrest a president. A sheriff can do it in his county. And a state or local grand jury, led by citizens, can indict a president and pass the indictment to a state’s attorney general. There is also a tradition that a ‘flag officer’ of the military — an admiral or general — can do it. But that is only a tradition; presumably it came about as the public would expect someone high up to be the arrestor. This does not involve court-martialing the president, unless the crime is happening during was and has to do with his/her performance as commander in chief.

The Constitution did envision something like a national guard, although some balk at calling it “national.” It is a creature of each state, and it may be called up for service. Who can call it up? Only Congress, per Article I, Section 8, Clause 15: “Congress shall have the Power to … provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”   And where would that militia arise from? It comes from the militia of each state: Clause 16:  “Congress shall have Power … to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States….”

In his sixth State of the Union address to Congress, in 1794, President Washington reported how he had executed the law by calling on the militia, meaning all men. Whiskey makers in western Pennsylvania had refused to pay a tax and assaulted a tax collector. It is known as the Whiskey Rebellion. Washington said:  “I ordered the militia to march. …I put into motion 15K men… It has been a spectacle to see the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers undeterred by a march of 300 miles over rugged mountains.” The reason it was a president, not the legislature, calling up the militia is that Congress was not in session.

What about a state militia or a private militia? This is a central premise of our nation. The Second Amendment contains 27 famous words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” This militia does not refer to the National Guard, but to the entity that preceded the National Guard, namely all able-bodied men, age 16 to 60. When written, in 1788, the word “infringing” was only a future threat to be guarded against. All men not only had permission to own a gun, they were required to do so, and to keep it in good condition so they could help deal with wrongdoers if needed.

According to scholar Edwin Vieira’s essay “Constitutional Homeland Security,” the militia is our real ‘Homeland Security.’ It has existed since the 1600s in America without needing government’s blessing. Private militias today are welcome to form, but must follow the law that forbids their parading in dress that resembles America’s military uniform. Vieira says, “Revitalized militia would mobilize millions upon millions of individuals for hundreds of different programs and bring with them the innovation and experimentation that emanate from minds not mired in the ruts of rigid bureaucratic centralism….”

Petitioner may be pleased to hear that in 1842, Mr S Nicholds of Kentucky wrote a pamphlet to remind citizens of their duty. He said:   “Our institutions are framed upon the broad principle, that no rightful authority can exist in any department … but by the assent of the governed. Other governments derive their powers from usage and implied assent. Not so with us.” A similar patriotic stand is seen in law: Per Article 10 of the New Hampshire state Constitution “The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary, and oppression, is absurd.”

It is not to be swept under the carpet that people ae experiencing a possible covert enemy, as Brunson indicates. Loss of crops, new diseases, financial collapse, and perhaps World War III are all anticipated “any day.” The Ohio and Mississippi Rivers may have been ruined by a poison. One piece of good news here is that many members of We the People have caught on.  Compare this to the Boston Town Records of 1772:

“We are trodden in the dirt. The Colonists have been branded with the odious name of traitors and rebels, only for complaining of their grievances; How long such treatment will, or ought to be born is submitted.”   Petitioner has submitted it. Tyrants are put on notice.

Now back to Morris’s poem. Please read it aloud with me, as though to the Constitution.

My heart-strings round thee cling,
⁠Close as thy bark, old friend!
Here shall the wild-bird sing,
⁠And still thy branches bend.

Old tree! the storm still brave!
⁠And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I’ve a hand to save,
⁠Thy ax shall harm it not.