I am here to say that the new case of Brunson v Adams contains the hottest balance-of-power issue I have ever seen. It is a case by an ordinary citizen– who believes his right-to-elect was violated by the various frauds going on at the polls in the 2020 election.
We want to thank Mary Maxwell for this Op-Ed – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
I’m eager to use Brunson’s case to emphasize the citizens’ role against corruption — in all matters, not just voting — but first let me describe the particulars. The docket number is #22-380.
Raland Brunson first filed a case in the state court of Utah. The feds then asked that it be removed to the federal court because the defendants are federal office holders (President, Vice President, and over 300 of the 535 members of Congress).
The name “Adams” appears in the title of the case, Brunson v Adams, as Magistrate Alma Adams is the one who allowed the case to be removed to the feds. So, as far as I can tell, Brunson is fighting something called Rule Eleven. That rule is based on a statute that does indeed allow a state case to be yanked out of state hands.
However, that jurisdictional issue is small peanuts compared to Brunson’s real issue. He complains that one member of Congress (I think it was Sen Ted Cruz) had asked, in December, for a 10-day investigation of claims of voter fraud, but congresspersons voted this down, so it did not happen.
Brunson regards that failure to investigate as a crime in itself. He says the Defendants broke their oath to protect the Constitution and the remedy is to remove them from office on grounds of treason.
Over the years, heaps of citizens have filed in courts, both state and federal, to complain about Congress’s neglect of duty. I certainly have done so, such as in Maxwell v Trump, a case about Congress’s failure to do its duty regarding war. But my cases never make it to the US Supreme Court. Brunson v Adams is now headed to SCOTUS. The conference will be held in January 2023 — soon. As usual, four of the nine judges must say Yes to “grant cert.” It is even possible for them to rule on the case “if they feel like it.”
Big Adjustment to Political Theory is Due
I now argue that Brunson can make the US Constitution, and therefore the US government, a thing of beauty and a joy forever — as someone once said. Brunson rails against the fact that members of Congress voted to say No to a request by one member that they carry out a certain investigation, as specified in federal law for times when (as in 1877) an election is thought by many observers to be invalid.
Brunson is saying (I paraphrase liberally): “Hey, you guys in Congress, I know that you know that the 2020 election was fraudulent in about five states, and it’s your duty, which you recognized years ago (in the 1877 case), to cease running toward Inauguration and hold a 10-day investigation. If you don’t do so, you are traitors, given that you took an oath to defend the Constitution. So get the hell out of here. Begone, Satan. I want my country back.”
During the Jan 6 melee, and before it and after it, I {Maxwell] published my opinion that Biden was legally elected based on the fact that Amendment XX provides for congressional interference if there is no other way to produce a president with sufficient electoral college votes (these days, 269). The amendment lays out the way a vice president (in 2021, Pence) presides over the opening of the ballots in a joint session of Congress and must accept challenges from the floor.
Pence did accept two challenges regarding Arizona and Pennsylvania and correctly sent each house to debate and vote on these. Both came back with insufficient votes to reject the state’s count. So I, being a sort of parchmentary prude, said, “That’s the end of it. Even if five states stink, the law shows the way for elected persons to fix that, and they (basically the Democrat majority) refused to do that, so we’ve gotta live with it. Sad, but what can you do?” Etc.
Brunson, God love him, said, “Wait a minute. Hold your horses, Maxwell. [He did not really address me, OK?] It’s not for you, Maxwell, to say, ‘Let’s accept sin.’ I, Brunson, say DON”T accept it. Kick the sinners out of the temple. [There’s precedent for that!]. Throw their tables over and let ’em know who’s in charge here. WE THE PEOPLE ARE IN CHARGE.”
The new balance-of-power issue, therefore, has to do with the role of THE PEOPLE in the Constitution and how it balances against all other comers. I can see today that we underrated ourselves. We Americans who established our polity by a declaration of independence in 1776 that said “King George, amscray” should not do a Maxwell and say “When our elected leaders do the wrong thing, the only hope is to replace them at the next [fraudulent?] election.”
I concede the field to Brunson. I say, “Corrupt politicians, amscray — and make it fast cuz we have worse than ‘retirement’ in store for you.”
Note: The rest of this article has only to do with how Brunson’s idea updates the older political theories of Montesquieu, Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes. (Remember Hobbes’ Leviathan? — not somebody you would want to meet in a dark alley). I propose that we are The New Leviathan. Even if our rule has to be harsh over “certain people,” well, that’s the reality of Nature. A society’s gotta do what a society’s gotta do.
I hope we will someday date American political theory as being pre-Brunson and post-Brunson.
The Old Balance-of-Power Theory
Raland Brunson’s insight shifts our emphasis from the balance among the three branches of government — legislative, executive, and judicial, and he discounts, slightly, the balance between the states and the feds. Brunson has puffed up — way, way up — the place of The People in the Constitution.
Consider the old balance-of-power theory. The authors of our 1787 US Constitution were directly influenced by the work of Frenchman Baron de Montesquieu and Englishman John Locke (writing in Holland). You can credit Locke with the idea that the government’s basis of authority is the consent of the governed. No small deal!
Montesquieu directly influenced the structuring of our federal government into three branches. He meant this to be a check on the government’s power. He expected each branch to be jealous of its turf, such that none could become dictatorial. Indeed, Congress’s prerogative of impeaching a president is pure checks and balances. A recalcitrant president could find himself “out the door.” Three US presidents have been impeached by the House but none of them got the door treatment.
The parchment also offers a fixed balance of state power versus federal power. Who attended the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 to write the Constitution? Fifty-five delegates from the 13 states. And they did not give away the kitchen sink. They allowed the feds to have only the powers enumerated in Article I. Today, this balancing may be dead. States do not fight against usurpation of their prerogatives. (Makes you wonder who gets elected as governor these days.)
Wait! There’s also a balance of people versus government in the Constitution. It consists of Article V’s provision for the people to amend the Constitution and the whole Bill of Rights by which the most humble get to elbow their way in. In the Fifth Amendment, another entity earned a mention — the grand jury. It belongs to The People. Grand Juries can and should inform the government of the need for prosecutions. Again, it’s not working, Folks. The feds, and perhaps each state, use a method of judicial or executive control over local grand juries.
Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau
Now let’s look at John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Government.” He wrote it in 1690, well before Charles Darwin wrote “The Descent of Man” in 1871. Locke incorrectly described a state of nature in which we had all been in a condition of freedom and natural rights. This was never the case; we are not hermits — we live in societies. And the very existence of a “right” depends on a society to give protection to such rights.
Locke was preceded by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who had pictured a human’s lot in the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short.” He, too, was incorrect, but from his incorrect view, he came up with the useful idea of people ceding some of their sovereignty to a ruler in exchange for peaceable social relations. He honored a Leviathan, a very strong ruling power.
And don’t forget Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote The Social Contract in 1762. He posited a “volunte generale” — the will of the people. This can be used in a bad way to excuse an excuse harsh laws — as in China or Victoria, Australia today. Folks are told it’s for the greater good. But Rousseau’s volunte generale also covers the opposite action: it supports majority rule as against the tiny minority of wealthy overlords. Yipee!
It’s High Time We Updated the Governing Theory
The new court case by Raland Brunson — delivered pro se, no less — is about the behavior of specific persons who occupy the various roles of the US government. Brunson said they are failing in their duty. Let me now use Brunson as a counterweight to the older balance-of-power theory. I say he has really shaken up the balance idea.
Because our Constitution contains the vital protections of the Bill of Rights and has enjoyed great authority, we should not want to pitch the parchment. So please don’t take my ideas here to mean that we should start from scratch — that would be disastrous. Let’s just imitate Raland Brunson in his attempt to make the Constitution work by making all individuals live up to their oath to that funding document.
Pause here to update the 17th, 18th, and 19th theories outlined above. They were all written when the population of the world was under 2 billion — it is now 8 billion. They were written when the strongest physical force you could use against an enemy was gunpowder. (No planes, no bombs, no bioweapons, no geo-engineering, no mind control, no WEF, etc.)
Thus, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau could hardly be expected, in their recommendations for designing a government, to understand the issue of globalist control, much less to provide for our current complicated circumstance.
So we need theorists who can analyze the pressures that are operating today. To put it crudely, I see a hidden group of individuals running the whole species for its hidden purposes — which may be simple selfish purposes. They have twisted everything, including our thought processes, to suit their maintenance of control. Poor jerks.
And they have a huge bevy of servants, maybe even the guy in the apartment next to yours, a nice guy who is trained to thwart the good of all. And he may not even realize he is doing that! Poor mixed-up creature.
I thank Raland Brunson for making me coin the phrase The New Leviathan. Anyone wishing to yak about that, please contact me at: MaxwellMaryLLB@gmail.com