Water Water Everywhere

Water is an essential element of life and therefore the control of water is an essential element to the control of people. Congress cannot grant itself new rights any more than the 16 Amendment granted it new taxing authority.^[1] Senate Bill 787 introduced by Senator Feingold as The "Clean Water Restoration Act" does not grant to congress a new regulatory right over all waters which ebb and flow, including lakes, rivers, streams, mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds.^[2] They already have it.

Congress is merely attempting to pass a bill to regulate rights we the people have failed to retain.^[3] That is not what people want to hear, but that is what they need to hear. It is what Patrick Henry called the whole truth. The question is why does congress have that power and why have we failed to retain it?

We need to take a look at a wider picture and discover how liberty is gained and lost. People are charging around at the red cape of congress imagining that this “apparent” seizure of water rights is some sort of unwarranted usurpation of their property rights. If this was an usurpation of a bonafide right we could honestly revolt in righteous disobedience.

Everyone should know and those whom you chose to have ministered your education and enlightenment should have told you that at least since 1933 it has been well established, published, and cognizable in courts that “The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual so-called 'ownership' is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State.”^[4]

This idea that”individual so-called 'ownership' is only by virtue of Government” is the absolute antitheses of what is required to maintain a pure republic. As we have already seen in previous articles a Republic^[5] is “A state or nation in which the supreme power rests in all the citizens…” so at least since 1933 the republic was virtually dead or at least abandoned.

The Federal government is supposed to guarantee to the States a “Republican form of government” but the people are supposed to “retain” their own rights. For the “supreme power” to remain with the people in the state they must lead lives that keep them independent of the “government.” Maintaining a republic is the responsibility of the people who live in it.

Ben Franklin was not kidding when he stated and asked, “You have a republic, now can you keep it?” When God granted man dominion on this planet, He directed and warned us to “dress it and to keep it” because if we were slothful we were likely to loose that individual dominion and go under the authority of another like Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh, Saul, Caesar or whatever flavor is most popular.

“The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility

rests on possession and use of land.” Emerson.

Early Americans came here to obtain an actual freehold title in land. Many, like the pilgrims who called themselves Separatists, would not even agree to come to America unless they could eventually obtain such fee simple tenure title where they actually owned the use of the land untaxed.

They knew that it was essential that the use of the land actually belonged to the people with no lord of earth standing between them and their God given dominion. The Pilgrims, and the Company who made their journey possible, had agreed that after 7 years of working for that Company some land and its use would actually be owned by the people independently of the Company. Since almost half of the original settlers were dead after the first year the price they were willing to pay for actual and clear title to land was extreme.

A Freeman^[6] had and is defined as someone who had a free hold title in land. In colonial America, “The ordinary citizen, living on his farm, owned in fee-simple, untroubled by any relics of Feudalism, untaxed save by himself, saying his say to all the world in townmeetings, had gained a new self-reliance. Wrestling with his soul and plow on week days, and the innumerable points of the minister’s sermon on Sundays and meeting days, he was becoming a tough nut for any imperial system to crack.”^[7]

It was for these reasons and their fierce self reliance and independence that the Freemen of America were able to lawfully sign the Declaration of Independence claiming an unwarranted usurpation by the king. These Freemen were still a minority in America, today they are almost none existent.

“Liber homo. A free man; a freeman lawfully competent to act as juror.^[8] An allodial proprietor, as distinguished from a vassal or feudatory.”^[9]

They understood that the King was revolting against the terms of the Charters and the natural rights they had obtained through their own sweat and blood. Men earned a free status by taking responsibility for themselves and earning the beneficial use of their own land and property by paying for it with the substance of their own being.

It was the propertied class and those who hoped to be Freemen someday who sought a righteous independence from unlawful usurping tyranny. These few but freedom loving Americans who were risking all so that they and their children might remain free were not rebels, but revolutionaries, and had been so since they first stepped foot in this new world.

Those who sought to be free souls under God, accepted the responsibilities coeval with those endowed rights. As usual most of the people were lukewarm on the subject. Over fifty thousand Americans joined the British to fight against those Americans seeking independence from the Crown's abuses of their well earned liberty.

These freeholders were not “contending that our rabble, or all unqualified persons, shall have the right of voting, or not be taxed; but that the freeholders and electors, whose right accrues to them from the common law, or from charter, shall not be deprived of that right.”^[10]

Citizenship “in the United States” has become “a political obligation depending not on ownership of land, but on the enjoyment of the protection of government; and it ‘binds the citizen to the observance of all laws’ of his sovereign.”^[11]

This is a far cry from statements of the courts back in 1829 which said things like “People of a state are entitled to all rights which formerly belonged to the king by his prerogative.”^[12] Or declarations of the court in 1793 which state, “In one sense, the term ‘sovereign’ has for its correlative ‘subject.’ In this sense, the term can receive no application; for it has no object in the [Original] Constitution of the United States. Under that Constitution there are citizens, but no subjects.”^[13]

What has happened to turn the world upside down and make the government sovereign and the people subject? This shift in society in relationship to its government seems to make the gains of that revolutionary conflict and the prior struggles and sacrifice little more than a failed enterprise.

We have rested far to long on the laurels of men, long dead, who once secured God given rights for themselves and their posterity. Their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness required a virtuous society composed of “minutemen” in word and deed, willing to pay the ultimate price for their sons, daughters and even their neighbors' freedom. Our modern pursuit of personal happiness has involved; not a virtuous heart but a visa mentality; not minutemen of service and sacrifice, but a government of benefits and entitlements at the expense of our neighbor; not a society willing to pay the price of liberty for all, but a monetary systems of indebtedness at the expense of our children.

Why have the people gone from sovereigns to subjects?

There are numerous reasons for this shift of which I could write a book about and have.^[14] One reason is because people naturally want to believe they are free.

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”^[15]

Another reason is that Citizens of the United States do not own freehold title in land. They have, at best, a mere legal title. A “legal title” is only an “apparent right of ownership and possession, but which carries no beneficial interest in the property, another person being equitably entitled thereto; in either case, the antithesis of ‘equitable title.’^[16]

To put it more simply, people work all their lives to obtain a legal title which does not include the right to the, “Profit, benefit, or advantage resulting from a contract, or the ownership of an estate...”^[17] They have just paid for the right to rent the land they live on, the use of which is highly regulated.

Their ownership is not by the virtue and endowment of God to dress and keep but is by the “virtue of Government”. As a mere user, a United States citizens, they must pay a use tax if they wish to keep “the right to use and enjoy property according to one’s own liking or so as to derive a profit or benefit from it…^[18] Fail to pay and you will be evicted. Fail to comply and you will be fined. Fail to bow and you will be punished. To call our selves free makes a mockery of those sacrificed that we might be free.

This tax is called tribute. Tribute is, “A sum of money paid by an inferior sovereign or state to a superior potentate, to secure the friendship or protection of the latter.”^[19] This “Excise (tribute), in its origin, is the patrimonial right of emperors and kings.”^[20]

“The hand of the diligent shall bear rule: but the slothful shall be under tribute.” Proverbs 12:24

If you owe Caesar you must pay Caesar, but have the honesty, courage and diligence to ask and seek the whole truth in righteousness as to why ye are subject to his ordinances and tribute?

“Blessed [are] they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6

 

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