Governments, like all other hierarchical institutions, depend upon the cooperation and, at least, the tacit consent over those whom they exercise power. In other words, government soldiers and police can force people to do things they don't want to do, but in the long run - in the face of adamant opposition - such coercion is either too expensive or too futile to accomplish its goals of subjugating entire populations. It is far simpler to motivate people to do what you want them to do, rather than forcing them to do it by pointing guns at them all the time. As Boris Yeltsin supposedly said,"You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it long."

Educating generations of parents and children in government schools and teaching them to be patriotic and support their government in political elections is one of the fundamental ways governments garner public support. Citizens are taught that it is both their right and duty to vote. But all this is done with an ulterior motive in mind. As Theodore Lowi, in his book INCOMPLETE CONQUEST: GOVERNING AMERICA pointed out:

Participation is an instrument of [government] conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed. ... Deeply embedded in people's sense of fair play is the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome. Those who participate in politics are similarly committed, even if they are consistently on the losing side. Why do politicians plead with everyone to get out and vote? Because voting is the simplest and easiest form of participation [of supporting the state] by masses of people. Even though it is minimal participation, it is sufficient to commit all voters to being governed, regardless of who wins.

Not voting in government elections is one way of refusing to participate; of refusing to consent to government rule over your life. Non-voting may be seen as an act of personal secession, of exposing the myth behind"government by consent." There are many reasons, both moral and practical, for choosing"not to vote," and they have been discussed in my anthology, DISSENTING ELECTORATE. To briefly summarize:

Truth does not depend upon a majority vote. Two plus two equals four regardless of how many people vote that it equals five.

Individuals have rights which do not depend on the outcome of elections. Majorities of voters cannot vote away the rights of a single individual or groups of individuals.

Voting is implicitly a coercive act because it lends support to a compulsory government.

Voting reinforces the legitimacy of the state because the participation of the voters makes it appear that they approve of their government.

There are ways of opposing the state, other than by voting"against" the incumbents. [And remember, even if the opposition politicians are the lesser of two evils, they are still evil.] Such non-political methods as civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, home schooling, bettering one's self, and improving one's own understanding of voluntaryism all go far in robbing the government of its much sought after legitimacy.

As Thoreau pointed our,"All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, ... . Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it." So whatever you do, don't play the government's game, Don't vote. Do something for the right.


For more commentary, please visit WendyMcElroy.com.

The Lancet's editor was also pressured to postpone publication until a date"after critical fundraising meetings" for several women's advocacy groups. "Activists perceive a lower maternal mortality figure as actually diluting their message," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Advocacy can sometimes get in the way of science."

"The U.N. has a track record of inflating disease figures to keep the aid money flowing, so I'd probably place more faith in the figures which show a lower disease burden," said Philip Stevens, of International Policy Network, a London think tank."This is yet more confirmation that whoever paints the most apocalyptic picture gets the most cash, even if they have to manipulate and spin the data."

The Lancet editorial on the study

For more commentary, please visit WendyMcElroy.com.

WWI was America's first extensive international conflict, but legal precedent existed for the treatment of resident foreigners.

In 1798, the threat of war with France loomed: immigrants from France and Ireland -- a nation aligned with the anti-British French -- were viewed with political suspicion. Accordingly, Congress passed four laws collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Naturalization Act required aliens to be residents for 14 years before becoming eligible for citizenship. The Alien Act authorized the deportation of"dangerous" aliens. The Alien Enemies Act allowed the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of any alien who was the subject of an enemy power. The Sedition Act provided fines and jail penalties for anyone who"shall write, print, utter or publish... scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress...or the President...with intent to defame...or to bring them...into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them...hatred."

The Acts had been pushed forward by the federalists -- those who favored a strong federal government and a loose interpretation of the Constitution: the federalists dominated Congress. One of their motives was to silence opposition from their political rivals, republicans, whom immigrants tended to support. The prominent republicans Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that the powers claimed by President John Adams under the Acts resembled those of a monarch. They denounced the Sedition Act in particular as"unconstitutional," as a violation of the First Amendment. Both the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures passed Resolves that rejected the Acts and set forth the doctrine of nullification.

Although no one was prosecuted under the first three measures, a series of influential republicans -- including prominent editors and printers -- were quickly charged under the Sedition Act, forcing some newspapers to close. One of the men prosecuted was Benjamin Franklin's grandson and the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. The charge: libeling President Adams. His arrest sparked a public outcry against the Acts, which helped give the Presidency to Jefferson in 1800. Once in office, he pardoned those convicted under the Sedition Act and Congress repaid the fines collected...with interest.

Thus, from America's earliest years, the issues of alien residents and free speech have been linked during crisis. Although the early republicans were not necessarily more sanguine about resident aliens than federalists, they were intensely suspicious of expanding the federal government's authority. They believed that the power to suppress constitutional freedoms would be used inevitably to quash political opposition.

The Alien Enemy Within

On April 16, 1917, all males older than 14 who were still"natives, citizens, denizens or subjects" of the German Empire became alien enemies. In 1918, an act of Congress included women aged 14 and older. In time, however, the term"alien enemy" came to apply to virtually any foreign resident the government deemed undesirable. It became an effective weapon the government wielded against individuals and organizations which were pacifist, critical of the war, or otherwise objectionable politically.

Alien enemies were a high priority on the wartime agenda. On the same day that Congress declared war, President Wilson issued twelve regulations for their treatment. Alien enemies were prohibited from owning such goods as firearms, aircraft or wireless apparatus. They could not publish an"attack" upon any branch of the U.S. government. They could not reside in an area designated as"prohibited" by the President. They could be removed to a location designated by the President. Alien enemies could not depart the U.S. without permission and they were required to register with the government to receive a registration card.

On November 16, 1917, eight more regulations were added to the original twelve. They restricted how closely and under what circumstances enemy aliens could approach facilities such as docks, railroads and warehouses -- thus, de facto restricting their employment. Aliens were banned from air travel and from the District of Columbia. The restriction embodied in Section 20 became the most controversial because it provided the foundation for the later internment of aliens. Regulation 20 reads, in part:

"...the Attorney General is hereby authorized to make and declare, from time to time, such regulations concerning the movements of alien enemies as he may deem necessary in the premises and for the public safety, and to provide in such regulations for monthly, weekly or other periodical report by alien enemies to federal, state or local authorities; and all alien enemies shall report at the times and places and to the authorities specified in such regulations." (Full text of the twenty regulations )

One motivation behind the regulations was clearly to establish control over radical groups who disagreed with government policies, including policies on the war.

WWI ushered a vast program of conformity and centralization into American society. For example, within commerce, the Railway Administration Act gave de facto control of the railroads -- the major source of transportation -- to the federal government. The War Labor Board, the War Industries Board, and a slate of other government agencies centralized commerce in the name of supporting the war effort. Fuel rationing, the draft, price controls...these and many other measures thrust the federal government deeply into the economic lives of the average American.

The federal government also intruded upon civil liberties, especially the right to dissent. The radical labor movement became a focus of government for several reasons. It was successful: in the first decades of the 20th century, labor unrest had spread like wildfire across broad sections of America and sparked effective strikes. It was anti-war: its prominent communist and socialist leaders believed the war was being fought for capitalism and they felt comradeship, not hostility, toward foreign workers. Socialism, in general, had become a political threat: in every Presidential election between 1900 to 1912, the labor leader Eugene Debs had run on the American Socialist Party ticket, receiving close to a million votes in 1912.

The radical labor movement was also an easy target because of its immigrant-heavy membership. Politically-minded immigrants had a history of bringing radical ideas with them. For example, in the last decades of the 1800s, the International Working People's Association (IWPA) issued no less than five papers out of Chicago alone, three of which were in German.

Moreover, by WWI, there was a bitter history of clashes between radical labor movements and the authorities. The Haymarket incident in Chicago is a notorious example. In the spring of 1886, 65,000 workers in the city either went on strike or were locked out by their employers. On May 3rd, the police fired upon a crowd of laborers, killing several. The next day, a protest meeting ended in a violent clash that left seven policemen and an unknown number of workers (estimated at about 20) dead. Eight radicals -- both immigrant and American-born -- were prosecuted. Or, more accurately, their ideology was put on trial. The prosecuting attorney admonished the jury,"Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men [the defendants] have been selected...because they are leaders...[C]onvict these men...save our institutions, our society." Although they were demonstrably innocent, four of the defendants were executed, with one escaping his fate through suicide.

By WWI, it was difficult to cleanly separate the issues of radical labor, socialism, anti-war and alien enemies from each other. The United States government viewed all as menaces.

A primary target became the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or"Wobblies," which grew so quickly that became a household name throughout much of America in the early 20th century. Today, few people have heard of the IWW. Its importance in U.S. social history has been almost forgotten. The Wobblies' mercurial rise to prominence was matched in drama only by its disastrous collapse from government repression. Its history is a cautionary tale.

The Industrial Workers of the World

In the summer of 1905, labor radicals assembled in Chicago to found a new group -- the IWW. It operated in competition with the more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL), then the most powerful labor group in the U.S. As well as embodying socialism, the IWW embraced less restrictive membership policies than the AFL. It actively organized and recruited among migrant workers, blacks, and immigrants from whom it received enthusiastic support. Leaders like William"Big Bill" Haywood thought all workers should organize into a single industrial union to avoid the possibility of individual trade unions being pitted against each other. The IWW employed a grassroots approach: the executive was purposefully weak; membership was open to everyone; local strikes were encouraged. Thus, under American-born leaders, the IWW became the most prominent voice of immigrant workers who were often snubbed by other labor organizations.

Conflict with authority was inevitable, even before WWI. Part of the reason was the IWW's willingness to use bare-knuckle tactics, such as sabotage and violent confrontation with strike-breakers. But the irresolvable conflict was ideological. To the IWW, the government was a tool of capitalist exploitation. To the authorities, the IWW was a revolutionary organization that sought to overthrow the existing government. Thus, when 165 IWW leaders were arrested in 1917, charges ranged from treason to the use of intimidation in labor disputes. In June 1917, Congress had passed the Espionage Act, which prescribed heavy fines and prison sentences for vaguely defined antiwar activities. The Act was quickly used against the IWW. In September, IWW meeting halls across the nation were raided by government agents. Over a hundred and sixty IWW officers, members and sympathizers were arrested.

One hundred and one defendants went on trial in April 1918, including IWW head Big Bill Haywood. After five months, the trial ended in a"guilty" verdict for all, with Haywood and fourteen others each receiving sentences of twenty years in prison. Collectively, the defendants were fined a total of $2,500,000. The IWW was virtually destroyed.

The shattering of the IWW caused little public protest as most people associated it with unAmericanism -- a charge fueled by minorities and foreigners in its membership. Even the language of the IWW was deemed unpatriotic because its impassioned rhetoric too closely mirrored that of socialists in other lands. An incident known as the Bisbee Deportation illustrates the depth of the public hatred toward the IWW and foreigners.

In mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, the IWW recruited members among Mexican and European workers who were routinely labored at lower paying-jobs than native-born Americans. In June of 1917, the IWW presented a list of demands to Bisbee's mining companies, including an end to discrimination against minority and foreign workers. When the companies turned down every demand, a strike was called.

Then a rumor erupted: the IWW had been infiltrated by pro-Germans. At 2:00 a.m., hundreds of armed vigilantes rounded up nearly 1,200 men whom they forced into twenty-four cattle cars of a train, shipped them to New Mexico and abandoned them in a remote area. The deportees were without shelter for weeks until U.S. troops escorted them to facilities where many were held for months. The authorities in Bisbee guarded all roads into town to prevent the men, or any other undesirables, from entering. Other local workers were put on trial and deported if found guilty of disloyalty to the mining companies. A federal commission investigated the deportations but found no federal laws had been violated. The matter was referred to the State of Arizona, which took no action against the mining companies.

A report in the Los Angeles Times (July 15, 1917) captured the general public's response,"[O]n our own soil is an enemy...preaching revolution and invoking anarchy...the I.W.W.’s. From Butte to Bisbee, from Seattle to Leadville, that international organization, filled with foreigners, officered by convicts, and attempting vaguely to guise its sabotage behind the specious title of “Industrial Workers of the World,” is in open warfare against our government."

The Bisbee deportation was co-ordinated by private vigilantes from whom the government often received enthusiastic support. In her biography, Queen Silver, who attended IWW meetings in Los Angeles as a child, recounted,"When the [IWW] person got up to make a collection speech that was a signal to all the American Legion people in the audience to arrest the one or two people who were beside them, as they had been deputized to do. Mother was one of the people arrested. They were all turned loose later on. It was harassment." Grace Verne Silver -- the arrested mother -- was not taken to the police station. A private business interest, the Merchants and Manufacturers Association maintained files on radicals for the police and Grace was detained there.

The American public had shown a willingness to tolerate and even to participate in the rounding up, harassment and forced"deportation" of native-born Americans. The forced deportation of foreign-born radicals from US territory would soon follow.

The End of World War I

As America entered the last year of World War I, 1918,"patriotic" fervor seemed to swell. In May, the Sedition Act imposed “a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both...” upon anyone disposed to"utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States." In October 1918, Congress passed the Alien Act, by which"any alien who, at any time after entering the United States, is found to have been at the time of entry, or to have become thereafter a member of any anarchist organization" could be deported.

Libertarians of the day, including Albert Jay Nock, H.L. Mencken, Randolph Bourne, and Oswald Garrison Villard spoke out in protest against such measures. But most voices still remained silent.

The various Acts of 1917 and 1918 were used to destroy what was left of the left-wing in America. Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to Congress, was sentenced to twenty years in prison for hindering the war effort. (While Berger was free on appeal, his constituency returned him to Congress.) The socialist labor leader Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for an anti-war speech.

On November 11th, 1918, the Allies and Germany signed an Armistice: the war was over.

But political panic -- partly stemming from the Bolshevik Revolution -- gripped America. In 1919, strikes broke out, crippling some segments of industry; sometimes they fierce violence broke out on both sides. Race riots shook cities across America, including Chicago where 5 days of rioting left 38 people dead, several injured and about a thousand homeless: the race riots were called the"Red Summer" of 1919. One event was pivotal: on May 1, 1919, several bombs were delivered through the mail to prominent figures, including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer: this was the beginning of the"Red Scare." The surviving Palmer blamed Communists whom he believed were overwhelmingly immigrants. In his essay"The Case Against the 'Reds'," Palmer explained,"My information showed that communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens who were direct allies of Trotzky [sic]. Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character, and it showed that they were making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to the Russian peasants." With the power to deport, Palmer and his assistant John Edgar Hoover launched a crusade against the radical left.

Beginning in the fall of 1919, between five and ten thousand suspected alien residents were arrested without warrants in what became known as the Palmer Raids. No evidence of a proposed revolution was uncovered; many of those arrested were found to be American citizens affiliated with a union or the"wrong" political party. The vast majority of arrestees were eventually released but hundreds of"enemy aliens" -- including the anarchist Emma Goldman, a naturalized citizen who was"denaturalized" -- were eventually deported to the Soviet Union.

The Supreme Court did not even defend the constitutional rights of the American citizens arrested under the Acts. Supreme Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., justified the repression in a famous decision in which he stated that when the exercise of free speech constituted a “clear and present danger” to America --"danger" as defined by the government -- then government could suspend the First Amendment.

The Palmer Raids continued into 1920. As anti-war scientists and protesters, union members and socialist leaders continued to be brutally arrested without warrants and held without trial, however, public approval shifted away. Opposition began to organize. For example, in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union formed to protest the violation of constitutional rights such as arrest without warrant, unreasonable search and seizure, the denial of due process, and police brutality. Its first director, Roger Baldwin, was a pacifist and a member of the IWW.

Palmer himself suffered a series of embarrassments that hurried the demise of his political influence. For example, he predicted of a communist uprising on May 1st, 1920 and caused such panic that the New York State legislature refused to seat 5 Socialists who had been elected. When the uprising did not occur, sharp resentment and skepticism replaced panic.

By 1921, the Red Scare was effectively over. It stands as a reminder of how national security interests can be used by government to suppress dissenting political ideas even beyond the period of warfare. This is especially true when those expressing the ideas can be vilified as"foreign." Indeed, any segregated group that threatened the political status quo came under suspicion.

For example, blacks. Race became tangled with labor interests and political intolerance: when black laborers migrated Northward en masse to the industrial cities, race riots were sparked. The lynching of blacks increased dramatically and black Americans became victims of the Red Scare, as well. For example, the Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey -- one of the most powerful black voices in America -- was targeted by the FBI for deportation and an organization he founded, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, was infiltrated and discredited by federal agents.

The journalist H.L. Mencken, who himself fell under government suspicion for his German descent and love of German culture, commented on the folly of trading fundamental liberties for security. He wrote of Holmes'" clear and present danger" opinion,"[O]ne finds a clear statement of the doctrine that, in war time, the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment cease to have any substance, and may be set aside by any jury that has been sufficiently inflamed by a district attorney itching for higher office....I find it hard to reconcile such notions with any plausible concept of liberalism." For more commentary, please visit wendymcelroy.com.

Excerpt: One reason why most countries don't find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of"ideal man" that Rand promoted in her more famous books... Too many critics of Ayn Rand-- until I was one of them -- would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, hackneyed. But it can't be dismissed because Rand is the name that keeps bubbling up from the Teabagger crowd and the elite conservative circuit in Washington as The Big Inspiration. The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.

For more commentary, please visit wendymcelroy.com.

In his book "The Religion of Nature Delineated," the English philosopher William Wollaston (1659-1724) wrote, “I lay down this as a fundamental maxim, That whoever acts as if things were so, or not so, doth by his acts declare, that they are so, or not so; as plainly as he could by words, and with more reality.” He argued that actions have “significancy”, by which he meant that the actions themselves could be true or false. For example, theft is a denial of the truth of who owns the item stolen. Conversely, returning property to someone who has lost it is an acknowledgment of the truth of ownership. In short, Wollaston argues that actions make truth claims and can even"imply propositions." For the latter, he uses the example of one group of soldiers who fire upon another; the act of shooting, he claims, is the statement"the other group is the enemy."

He then argues that moral evil is the denial through action of truth and moral good is the affirmation of it through action.

I remember how impressed I was by this formulation of the relationship between values, action and facts. Undoubtedly the groundwork for being impressed was an earlier embrace of Ayn Rand's arguments connecting values to facts. For weeks I went around trying to translate moral actions into the truth or lie they were expressing. Quite apart from whether Wollaston is correct in his formulation, the exercise entertained me then and now...and led to some interesting conclusions. Give it a whirl.

For more commentary, please visit wendymcelroy.com.

President Obama said Tuesday night it would cost $30 billion this fiscal year — or about $1 million per soldier — to send 30,000 additional troops there. That’s a low estimate, budget experts say, but let’s run with it for the moment. An extra $30 billion in Afghanistan means that in 2010 alone, US military spending in Afghanistan will equal nearly half of total spending on the war since 2001, according to Travis Sharp, military policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. The troop increase will cost $2.5 billion per month, $82 million per day, $3.4 million per hour, $57,000 per minute, and $951 per second. It’s a direct tax on Americans: about $195 for each taxpayer next year. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Full article below the jump. Note: the organization Veterans for Common Sense expands on the continuing cost of disability payments and healthcare for veterans wounded, injured, or ill due to their military deployment to the Afghan War. VCS states, "as of June 2009, VA treated 480,000 Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran patients...Exacerbating the situation is the fact that about 40 percent of our forces have deployed twice or more to war, further increasing the risk of depression, PTSD, and suicide. Yet both VA and the military lack the urgently needed mental healthcare providers to provide exams and treatment for our service members and veterans." Click on [Read the rest...] to continue reading CSM article.

“The total cost of [the escalation in] Afghanistan will be at least twice the cost and perhaps three times the cost of the estimate, says Linda Bilmes, a budget and public-finance expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. When she counts replacement of worn-out military equipment, disability payments to soldiers, Veterans Administration medical care, and the interest charges to finance the war, the tab doubles. When she adds indirect costs to the economy — say, the lost wages of a parent who quits his job to care for a son wounded in combat — it triples.

“We know that those are a decades-long costs,” says professor Bilmes. “The next question is: How do we budget for it? And how do we pay for it?”

A war tax, war bonds, and budget cuts have all been proposed, although it looks as though the administration will just keep on borrowing. In whatever form it comes, the real costs for the individual taxpayer could peak anywhere from $400 to $600 annually for the next couple of years and then begin to tail off — assuming all goes well in Afghanistan.

For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com.

TASER Restrictions: Aim for what now? [Quoting from the Arizona Republic.]

The maker of Taser stun guns is advising officers to avoid shooting suspects in the chest with the 50,000-volt weapon, saying that it could pose an extremely low risk of an"adverse cardiac event."

The advisory, issued in an Oct. 12 training bulletin, is the first time that Taser International has suggested there is any risk of a cardiac arrest related to the discharge of its stun gun. But Taser officials said Tuesday that the bulletin does not state that Tasers can cause cardiac arrest. They said the advisory means only that law-enforcement agencies can avoid controversy over the subject if their officers aim at areas other than the chest.

So what use is the TASER if you can't fire it at the largest target possible - center mass? We guess we'll be going back to shooting and killing non-compliant subjects and mentally disturbed individuals shortly.

First of all...WONDERFUL. Even a cop I semi-respect predicts that taser restrictions will mean"going back to shooting and killing non-compliant subjects and mentally disturbed individuals shortly." Note: he doesn't say"violent" or"threatening" subjects but uses the word"non-compliant." As in the non-protestor who was forced to his knees by police for a trophy photo during the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh? If the student (who was returning home from a pizza parlor) has been less compliant in kneeling before the ring of policemen, would he have been tasered and/or shot? What an honororable profession it is to be a policeman!

Second and last of all...I wish people would stop calling tasers"non-lethal." There are dozens of cases in which tasers have clearly caused death. What they are is"less lethal" than guns...at least, guns in the hands of cops. In the hands of people who use guns responsibly, the weapons prevent violence and do not cause it.

For more commentary, please visit www.wendymcelroy.com.

The email reads, My husband is in debtor’s prison, and he is not alone. The court has him in custody until he pays a $15,000 cash bond. We have no money or property. Unless we get help, he could be there for the remainder of his life.

While imprisonment for debt was eliminated in this country in the 19th century, it has re-emerged under a new name: contempt of court. A defendant is deemed “in contempt” if they do not pay a court ordered debt, regardless of their ability to pay. The punishment: they are stripped of their liberty and sit in jail, at the taxpayer’s expense, until and unless money is found to purchase their release.

If my husband had raped a woman he would be entitled to a trial by an impartial jury. He does not enjoy that right as a debtor. If my husband had sold drugs to children he would be entitled to legal representation. He does not enjoy that right as a debtor. If my husband had molested a child, he would be subject to no more than a maximum sentence allowed by the law. As a debtor he can be held for the rest of his life. If my husband had robbed a bank he would be entitled to one phone call upon arrest. He did not get this opportunity and we had no communication until the 7th day of his incarceration.

The United States Constitution guarantees the right to bankruptcy. We went through this process but were effectually denied our right to the remedy of bankruptcy when his debt was deemed “non-dischargable.” Additionally, I believe his 1st, 5th, 6th, and 14th amendment rights are being violated. His freedom has been stripped. This is not the United States of America of which I was taught to be a proud citizen as a child.

I write not only on my husband’s behalf, but also for the thousands of other Americans who sit in jail for the simple “crime” of not being able to pay their debts. How sad for this country when these words, written over 250 years ago, are known to ring true in modern America :

"Since poverty is punished among us as a crime, it ought at least to be reated with the same lenity as other crimes: the offender ought not to languish at the will of him whom he has offended, but to be allowed some appeal to the justice of his country. There can be no reason why any debtor should be imprisoned, but that he may be compelled to payment; and a term should therefore be fixed, in which the creditor should exhibit his accusation of concealed property. If such property can be discovered, let it be given to the creditor; if the charge is not offered, or cannot be proved, let the prisoner be dismissed." Samuel Johnson: Idler #22 (September 16, 1758).

For more commentary, please visit www.mcelroy.com.