Miracle on Main Street: Under Investigation/Putting the Constitution in Your Everyday Conversation
UNDER INVESTIGATION
we
One evening recently, at their request, I met with two
_ Special Investigators from the Tennessee Department of
» Revenue at a favorite Sewanee hangout, Shenanigan’s.
_ They announced that their purpose for the meeting was to
investigate me for possible criminal and civil violations of
the Tennessee Revenue Code. Years ago, and repeatedly, I
had asked the state to inform me what “Dollar” meant on
the tax forms for my little theatre restaurant, but never got
_ acomprehensible reply. So I looked up Federal statutes for
a definition of “Dollar.” No one had ever paid us in gold or
. silver, so I assumed we’d had no Dollar income and owed
no Dollars.
One of the agents advised me of my right to remain
silent and to have an attorney. Then, he asked me my full
* name. I chose to remain silent on that, and on all other
- questions that would make their investigation into my fi-
- nances a piece of cake. |
_ Uniquely in America, we are under no obligation to pro-
' vide information that can be used against ourselves.
Further, the fact that we choose not to give information
cannot be used against us, either. Silence can NOT pre-
71
72 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
sume guilt. Yet, how many Americans know this? Aside
from Article I Section 10, the Fifth Amendment is the main
reason | intend to remain forever an American person. It is
the most wonderful guarantee of freedom from a malig-
nant government in the whole world.!
I got the distinct feeling that the agents respected my
using my Constitutional right against inquisition. They had
heard my views on money before, back when they were
investigating Rusty Leonard who had asked me along as a
witness, and so tonight they started posing questions
about money. Not MY money (I wouldn’t answer those
questions), but about money in general. They had been
thinking about it, and wanted to know more. All three of
us relaxed. Then I told them about Washington’s letters
during and after the great Continental Inflation. They
hadn’t known about that. They hadn’t known about Judge
Roger Sherman’s reasons for Article I Section 10, either. I
told them about all my unanswered (or evasively an-
swered) correspondence with state people begging them
for a definition of “Dollar” on state forms. I told them that
as soon as an officer of the state showed me where I was
wrong, I would mend my ways immediately. I also told
them that they, as much as you and I, had the power to
save their personal finances from exploding in their faces.
“But if we went to a redeemable currency,” one of them
said, ‘‘what would happen to the balance of payments,
interest rates, the IMF, international trade, things like
1. The best job of educating Americans of their Fifth Amendment (and other)
privileges under the Constitution is being done, not by our most distinguished uni-
versities, but by THE ARIZONA CAUCUS CLUB. Charles Riely, its Director, has
asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege on his 1040 IRS forms since 1970, giving the
government no information, paying no money. In 1979, he was tried in Federal
District Court in Phoenix for willful failure to file and was found innocent by a 12-person
jury. Chuck deserved the cover of both Time and Rolling Stone for this stunning proof
that our Constitution gives one man greater power than the entire U.S. Justice De-
partment and IRS combined, but the event was naturally black-listed by most of the
media. The transcript of his trial is, in my opinion, as much a dramatic masterpiece as
Inherit The Wind; it will make your heart soar and you will cheer. Write ARIZONA
CAUCUS CLUB, P.O. Box 60, MESA, ARIZONA, 85201, for their complete list of the
finest, latest, and most comprehensive constitutional materials on the market today.
The US vs Riely Transcript is now available from Spencer Judd, Publishers for
$7.00.
UNDER INVESTIGATION 73
that?”
“Tf we had gold and silver money again,” the other said,
“wouldn’t the banks go broke? Wouldn’t all government
collapse?”
That's the debate trap, I told them. Experts can filibuster
day after day, week after week, month after month, year
after year. “What if” is the most potent weapon the
Friends of Paper Money have. Debate and indecision
merely fertilize inflation. |
The best illustration I could think of was believing in
God. If you sit down and try to figure out the conse-
quences of living by God’s program, you'll be so busy
projecting, calculating, figuring, you'll never get around to
committing to Him. The way to believe in God, as any
minister or priest will tell you, is assume He is Truth and
just begin operating by His system, no questions asked.
Like an automatic pilot. If Truth is good, then good things
will happen to you. If Truth is good, should bad things
threaten you you'll know innately how to ward them off.
Clinging to Truth. That's all. The simplest thing in the
world, Clinging to Truth automatically summons good conse-
quences. The right things just fall into line. Debates and
indecision evaporate. You're free just to be happy. That’s
what God’s all about, God and law and Truth. I’ve never
known a person to choose God and be dissatisfied with his
choice, have you? On the other hand, I’ve known many
people who postpone and debate, postpone and debate,
trying with their masters degree intellects to reason and
predict outcomes. For their trouble, they seem always
plagued with some inexplicable disorder. Some malfunc-
tion that needs attention. Their problem is that they try to
evaluate in each situation which would be the more profit-
able act: the truthful or the untruthful. They are the prison-
ers and practitioners of Situation Ethics, and they’re so
busy with their constant inner debate they haven't the time
to relax and enjoy the great beauty of life. For all their
bother, about half their decisions poison them anyway.
74 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
The United States Constitution is so harmonious with
the simplest unchangeable laws of nature that I whole-
heartedly agree with those who consider it to be Divinely
inspired. No other constitution of any other country in the
world guarantees its people a government sworn to protect
and defend individual freedom, freedom to be right, freedom
to be wrong, and most importantly the freedom not to be
tricked out of their property by some clever scheme. A
clever scheme like paper currency promising redemption
for gold and silver one day, then suddenly reneging on the
promise after your precious metal has been taken away
from you. Whether it’s one week or twenty years before you
feel the effects of such a dirty trick, you have the freedom
to blow the scheme’s cover whenever you've had enough.
And it’s guaranteed right there in Article I Section 10, in
those 17 magic words of Judge Sherman. Everybody else in
the world is being systematically robbed of their property
because they don’t have a law against paper money. We
have one, but we don’t know it. We know batting averages
and the biographies of movie stars, but we don’t know we
have a law against economic tragedy, a law every public
official from Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue is sworn
to support.
So, I told my friends from the Revenue Department, you
don’t need to be overly informed on interest rates, interna-
tional payments, bond issues, gold prices, silver futures, or
other consequences; and you certainly don’t have to debate
the pros and cons of obeying the United States Constitu-
tion. The choice is as simple as clinging to Truth or to
Untruth. God and justice, or confusion and perjury.
Just OBEY that God-inspired United States Constitu-
tion, forget about the rest of the world (is the rest of the world
worrying about you?), and good things will happen to
everyone beginning immediately. And in ways so vast and
unexpected that they would be impossible to calculate in
advance even at MIT.
Of course, some of the closer friends of paper money
UNDER INVESTIGATION 75
might have to revise priorities just a little bit, but shouldn’t
they? Shouldn't they pay a few dues after all they’ve charged us?
The conversation lasted almost two hours, then reached
a warm and friendly conclusion. As we were getting up to
leave, one of them said, ‘That part about not having to be
overly informed, just believing in God and everything else
falls into line, that makes a great deal of sense to me.”
Next evening, several good old boys who had been
watching the interview apprehensively from the bar asked
me if I’d been scared. ‘‘How can I be scared,” I said, “when
all I've done is obey a law those guys are sworn to up-
hold?”
I deny the power of the general government to making paper
money, or anything else a legal tender.’’
: —Thomas Jefferson
“The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be
decided according to the terms of our Constitution itself,
and not according to judges’ views of fairness, reasonableness, or
justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly
adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by
judges under the guise of interpretation.”
—Justice Hugo Black, in Columbia
University’s Charpentier Lectures,
1968
The people can discern right, and will make their way to a
knowledge of right . . . The appeal from the unjust legislation of
today must be made quietly, earnestly, perseveringly; in a popular
government injustice is neither to be established by force, nor to be
resisted by force: in a word, the Union, which was constituted by
consent, must be preserved by love.”
—George Bancroft,
Commemorative Oration
Upon the Death of Andrew Jackson,
Washington,
June 27, 1845
76
12
PUTTING THE CONSTITUTION
INTO YOUR
EVERYDAY CONVERSATION
mw
Now that you understand the differences between
paper and lawful money, and between law and hearsay,
you're in a position to discuss things with persons in gov-
ernment. Educate them. Most of them have never had
anyone bring up the constitutionality of paper money be-
fore. Don’t harangue them or be rude (as I confess I have
done in the past). Remember, they’ve done nothing wrong
as long as people are willing to give them paper without
objecting to its lawlessness. Here are some little things you
can do:
TALK IT UP
A letter to various state and local officials in your town or
county—and to your state representatives—asking them if
they enforce payment of taxes, fines, and other debts in
anything other than gold and silver coin will alert them to
the issue. And while you’re at it, send a copy to your
governor. Send your state’s Attorney General a letter ask-
ing him for an opinion (he’s obliged to respond): “Is Article
I Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution still binding on this
state?” Get them all reading and talking.
77
78 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
The subject is so touchy to many officials that they will
probably answer you evasively, cunningly. In person, they
may even make remarks and innuendos suggesting that
you’re nuts, but don’t let this bother you. You're right, and
they know it, rather “fear” it. They’re afraid that if you
win, the whole universe will cave in on their heads. They
have this fear because they’ve been educated (like you and
I) by the Friends of Paper Money to think the problem is
“very delicate,” “complicated,” and completely out of their
hands. The ideasphere says the problem is solvable only
by the celebrities in Washington. For many decades, our
state and local officials have been conditioned to feel in-
ferior: they’re not as famous, not as well-paid, not as inter-
nationally glamorous as the Washington dignitaries. This
creates a helpless attitude.
It’s up to you to show your Main Street public servants
that they have incredible power. Show them how the Con-
stitution was written to give THEM ALONE the power to
calm America’s wild economic thrashing. THEM ALONE.
Only THEY can kill financial confusion dead in its tracks by
restoring the solid foundation of gold and silver coin. Tell
them about Article I Section 10 and about the money of
account of the United States.
Mention to the checkout girls and other clerks you en-
counter in a typical day that the tax they’re collecting from
you is in unlawful money and that you’re not kidding.
They’re conspiring with the state to violate the Constitu-
tion, tell them good-naturedly. Tell them that the reason
food prices are soaring is that increasing paper increases
prices, and that only the state can stop paper by refusing to
make it a tender. Tell them that they and the state are
illegally making something other than gold and silver coin
a tender in payment of debt. The Constitution forbids en-
forcement of taxes by any state or local official in paper,
plastic, copper, checks or bank digits. And you don’t have
any gold or silver, because the Federal Reserve won't give
you any.
THE CONSTITUTION IN EVERYDAY CONVERSATION 79
Tell them to ask old-timers if food prices don’t remain
relatively stable when paper is redeemable for gold and
silver coin. Show them Article I Section 10. You could offer
someone $1,000 to show you where that has been
amended. You could even offer $10,000 to anyone who can
show you a law that permits the state to circumvent Article
I Section 10. You’re 100% safe on both offers, as of 1980.
You could offer a million and no one would be able to
collect.
Discuss it with your priest or minister. The Constitution
is the closest thing to Scripture there is. If it’s the codifica-
tion of the word of God in legal terms, it’s certainly worth
recommending from the pulpit and in counselling and in
Sunday School. Worth studying daily.
AVOID CONGRESSMEN AND SENATORS
Don’t bother your Congressman about a redeemable
currency. He’s probably the greatest Friend of Paper
Money in the country today. If you really want to hear
some uneasy, extremely cunning word-mincing, talk to
your Congressman about restoring a gold and silver mone-
tary system. I don’t recommend it unless he happens to be
willing —as a state citizen—to impose Article I Section 10
upon high officers in state government. If not, he has the
perfect excuse for copping out.
Because the Constitution empowers Congress “to bor-
row money on the credit of the United States.” In borrow-
ing from the Federal Reserve System, your Congressman
and Senator are merely carrying out their Constitutional man-
date. Your representatives in Washington are sweethearts
of the Federal Reserve. The Friends of Paper Money con-
tribute gobs to all the candidates and entertain lavishly the
winners once in office. That’s why you rarely if ever hear a
peep of criticism on the American banking system out of
Washington. If anyone is criticized it’s you, for ‘“wasting”
our natural resources and oil, for buying too many things,
for enjoying life, etc.
80 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
What Congress can do is try to balance the budget,
which amounts to little more than scolding imaginary vil-
lains in the ideasphere. And while Congress can’t object to
paper tender, it can enact legislation permitting the reduc-
tion of standards of quality in foodstuffs, investments,
manufactured goods, and personal freedom—legislation
requiring you to lower your standard of living in the name
of ‘‘conservation” —for the express purpose of enabling the
value of your money to be further diminished. Since your
Washington representatives enjoy a virtual immunity from
inflation through cost-of-living raises they vote for them-
selves, they simply don’t feel the chaos and pain in the
same way you do.
No, as famous, as majestic, as well-groomed, as om-
nipotent, as black-limousine dignified as Congress might
seem in our minds, it is absolutely helpless to initiate the action
that will turn away the gathering tragedy.
Don’t waste your time with Washington on this.
AVOID VOTING
We Americans treasure our most prized possession: our
vote. There’s something slightly unpatriotic about some-
one who doesn’t use his vote to determine the course of his
republic. The media are filled with urgings to vote.
But what good is your vote if everyone up for election is
ignoring the law? Won’t more voters just hasten the chaos
and confusion? If you were ignoring the law and were
elected by a landslide, would you sense any inducement to
stop ignoring the law?
When officials abide by the United States Constitution,
the vote is our way of selecting the best persons and the
best government. But if our officials are breaking the Con-
stitution, or allowing, it to be broken without lifting a
finger, your vote is literally their license to steal. You are
giving them permission to take your property and control
your life. If you give them that permission, many will take
you up on it, because lots of folks enjoy controlling others
DE ee er re Pa eye ee
THE CONSTITUTION IN EVERYDAY CONVERSATION 81
and amassing property. If you vote for anyone that allows
Article I Section 10 to be ignored, don’t you deserve to be
ravaged by inflation?
The vote is only a small part of your influence over your
public servants, and it only works when the Constitution’s
money system is in operation. You might as well stay home
on election day as long as the Constitution’s money system
is in mothballs, because you'll only be voting for violators
or accomplices. (Don’t remove your name from the Regis-
tration Lists, though. You’d be giving up your right to
serve on a jury, which is a thousand times more important
than voting. On a jury, you become a judicial officer, with
as much power as a judge!)
LAWYERS'.
My personal experience is that many lawyers are igno-
rant of the Constitution as law. They see the Constitution as
the point of departure for Supreme Court “interpreta-
tions.” To hear many lawyers tell it, the Constitution only
means what the Supreme Court SAYS it means. This is
pathetically untrue. This is living in the legal ideasphere.
It’s Supreme Court Worship. Abraham Lincoln com-
plained about Supreme Court Worship in his First Inau-
gural Address:
If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting
the whole people is to be fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,
then the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.
The Supreme Court can’t make laws. The Constitution
rules the Supreme Court, not the other way around. The
Supreme Court is simply a final court of appeal that de-
cides specific cases brought to it. It often refuses to hear
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82 THE MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET
cases. Too, it often refuses to judge cases. Imagine having
waited years for a Supreme Court decision and then get-
ting a statement like this made by Justice Brandeis in
Ashwander v Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 US 288:
A judge, conscious of the fallibility of human judgment, will
shrink from exercising in any case where he can conscientiously
and with due regard to duty and official oath decline the responsibil-
ity.
Lawyers who depend too heavily on case law instead of
the Constitution ought to be reminded that judges are
swom to support the Constitution, not case law.
I now feel apologetic for having criticized lawyers. After
all, my father was one. I’ve got friends in the profession.
Let me call on a lawyer, then, to criticize lawyers. T. David
Horton, a member of the Nevada, the Virginia, and the
District of Columbia bars, and a member of the United
States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said:
The course that lawyers take called ‘Constitutional Law’
frankly doesn’t consist of studying the Constitution. It involves
memorizing the catechism—studying the sophistries—by which
one provision after another of our Constitution is construed out of
existence. This is one reason why in our present constitutional
crisis we find lawyers among those who are derelict, failing to
advance any remedy to correct the situation. 1
Mr. Horton then revealed the astonishing reason why
lawyers are lacking in fundamentals of the United States
Constitution. In the words of one young lawyer: “There
are no questions on the bar examination on the Constitu-
tion, so why should we bother with it?” 2
I’m afraid the first step in:the restoration of America to
happiness and economic prosperity will not, can not occur
1. A. E. Roberts, The Republic: Decline and Future Promise, Ft. Collins, Colo: Betsy Ross
Press, p. 69.
2. Ibid.
THE CONSTITUTION IN EVERYDAY CONVERSATION 83
in the voting booths, the Supreme Court, among our
lawyers, or at the federal level. For our Constitution re-
serves the greatest amount of power not to dignitaries but
to housewives and shop owners, workers, the people. Just
plain folks. The miracle will happen right in your town,
right there on Main Street, and you and a couple of friends
will pull it off. As Charles Riely said, “It will not be the
lawyers, politicians or bureaucrats who save America. It
will be the people who work with their hands. House-
wives, truckers, carpenters, and farmers will turn this
country around.”
And because my wife and I both have been in the pro-
fession, I would like to add schoolteachers.
2 Tichihaes are more frequent crime victims than adults are
now or were during their youthful years.
“Two of every five high school students are victims of violent
crimes including robbery, assault, and murder.”’
—U.S. CENSUS BUREAU,
reported by John F. Sims in
Moneysworth, October, 1978
A. who walks with wise men becomes wise.”
—PROVERBS 13:20
Vou see, the more we are conditioned by education and Just
living in a society which teaches us to think along certain lines,
the easier we are to fool. The magician encourages us to follow one
logical path —the one we are accustomed to follow in a normal
situation —while he, unknown to us, takes an entirely different
one to accomplish his illusion. Thus, the hardest people to fool are
children, who take little for granted. The easiest are scientists.”
—Charles Reynolds,
Magician’s Consultant, Parade,
August 24, 1980
“Write young people are gathering flowers and nose gays,
Let them beware of the snake in the grass.”
—Roger Sherman,
Almanac, 1750, New York
84
13
A LESSON
THEY’LL NEVER FORGET
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