Solomon's Navy

The Secret Coup D'Etat

The Founding Fathers of the United States were concerned, and rightly so, that a standing military would be a threat to freedom and democracy. Probably the majority of democracies have at one time or another been overthrown by military coups. They wanted private militias so people would be armed and trained in the use of such arms, and could be called on by the Federal Government in the event of war.

What a militia was to be, and the intent thereof, are clearly shown in the following quotes:

1. “The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them”. Tenche Coxe, Delegate to Continental Congress, Oct. 21, 1787.
2. “A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always posses arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle”. Melancton Smith, Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 1788.
3. “That standing Armies in time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in Cases of necessity; and that at all times, the Military should be under strict Subordination to the Civil Power”. New York's proposed wording for the Constitution.

However, the idea of not maintaining a standing army and calling up militias proved unworkable and after the War of 1812 was discontinued, except for the State Militias (now National Guard). But keeping the military under civilian control has for 225 years prevented a military coup.

Unfortunately, there were other dangers the Founding Fathers never foresaw nor could foresee. By far the most dangerous of these was the instituting of civilian intelligence agencies during World War 2. Not under the control of the military, these agencies were first overseen by Congress, but that oversight has, since 9/11 (or even well before) become purely nominal, even as the intelligence community has experience phenomenal growth. The advent of electronic communications and their near-universal adoption by businesses and the public has opened the door to universal collection of information on all Americans, and most people in the rest of the world. From spying on known enemies of America, agencies such as the NSA have moved to spying on everyone. “Secret Courts” rubber stamp data collection to make it appear legal. Everything is classified so that it can't be challenged or debated publicly.

What people don't seem to realize is that, by so doing, these agencies now know almost everything worth knowing about everyone. And “everyone” includes politicians, judges, military leaders, etc. And knowledge is power – they can now control nearly everyone.

While gathering all this information doesn't necessarily make America any more effective against terrorism (intelligent terrorists eschew electronic communication), it does give the NSA, CIA, etc. tremendous unconstitutional and illegal power. Few politicians make it to the State or National level without having a lot of skeletons in the closet. The Intelligence Budget will never be cut because all the intelligence community has to do is hint to a few key congressmen that “such and such might be accidentally leaked”, and most of them will cave. Unconstitutional and illegal data collection will continue because the most of the judges can be controlled. Want to know why Barak Obama ignored most of the recommendations of his NSA review group? It's not hard to figure out. Most of what the NSA is doing is blatantly unconstitutional, and also a violation of much the Democratic Party stands for, but Obama caved. We all suspect he has things to hide.

It has been a matter of public knowledge that a number of prominent military officers have also been replaced recently – perhaps some because of corruption but I suspect most so that they can be replaced with controllable people.

So we can see that the Intelligence Community has already carried out a secret coup d'etat and now runs the Federal Government. It is secret because that is the way spooks operate. They don't need to do it overtly and put their own man in the White House as dictator – in fact, they would rather have a puppet in the White House to take the heat and be a lightning rod for the blow-back from their bad decisions. As long as they can maintain power and control from behind the scenes, and the puppets don't rebel, they are happy to remain invisible.

At present, it is doubtful the NSA and their partners in crime care what John Doe posts on Facebook, or Jane Doe writes in an email to her congressman, or even about this article I am publishing on my blog. But Lord Acton has never yet been proven wrong: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Expect the power of the Intelligence Oligarchy to continue to grow and for those behind the scenes to become more and more corrupt, until everyone is in danger if anything they say could be taken wrongly. People will start “disappearing”. Eventually an overt coup may well take place. The Republic has already come to an end. It still exists in name and outward form, but is meaningless as far as having any real power. There is no longer a balance of power among the three branches of government – all power is flowing into the hands of the spooks. The “people”, who were supposed to have the ultimate power, now have none, being under surveillance in all their communications, in their persons by unending cameras, and soon by drones looking down on them from the skies.

For this we can thank the “Merchants of Fear”, prominent in both political parties, who would have us believe that there is a terrorist under every bed, and that only surrendering our privacy and Constitutional Rights can protect us from Terrorism – while all the while the real danger to freedom is from the people supposedly fighting terrorism.

They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Franklin