As the founder and leader of Oath Keepers,  an organization allegedly organized to defend the US Constitution,  Stewart Rhodes seems like the last guy one might expect to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof” (18 U.S. Code § 2384 — Seditious Conspiracy).

Nonetheless, Stewart finds himself charged with doing exactly that in actions related to the 2021 Capitol Riot. And while he entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court on January 25, it seems pretty clear that the intent of the rioters in general and of the organized Oath Keepers presence among them was, in fact, to forcibly “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of” Congress’s constitutionally mandated counting of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

The devil, of course, is in the details. What did Rhodes actually do? Who did he do it with or for? What was his intent? The obvious counter-argument, from those who believe the election was stolen, is that Congress itself comprised the “seditious conspiracy” and that Rhodes and company were attempting to put down an insurrection against the “legitimate” government. That argument seems unlikely to take flight in the courts, but it’s going to be an interesting show.

My interest in the affair is more by way of noticing a massive contradiction between the US Constitution in general, and the seditious conspiracy statute in particular, on one hand, and the founding principles of the United States on the other.

Governments, the Declaration of Independence declares, “deriv[e] their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,” and absent such consent for a particular government, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Which, as you may recall, America’s British colonists proceeded to do. By force.

But then came the Constitution: “Oh, we didn’t mean THIS government!”

The ink wasn’t dry on that document when George Washington led an army into Pennsylvania to suppress, among other things, the “setting [of] seditious poles” — liberty poles, the symbols of the very revolution which brought Washington to power.

The Constitution was, to put it bluntly, the American counter-revolution. Its purpose was to put the pre-revolution planter/merchant aristocracy back in charge, albeit without the King of England over them, to put the serfs back in their place, and to lay all that “Right of the People to alter or to abolish” guff to rest once and for all.

The dust-up between Congress and the Oath Keepers wasn’t about your rights or your freedom. It was about which tyrant’s hand would wield the scepter of power for another four years in service to a machine which assumes itself permanently entitled to rule you.

Fortunately, such assumptions of permanency are always wrong.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The UK’s Home Office, Rolling Stone reports, is ramping up for a new offensive against end-to-end encryption, starting with a $750,000 payment to advertising agency M&C Saatchi for a publicity campaign aimed at scaring the bejabbers out of parents.

“Patriotism,” Samuel Johnson said in 1775, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” These days, it tends more toward first resort than last refuge. Both the UK and US governments have leaned into that approach for years — “TERRORISTS use encryption! You don’t like TERRORISTS, do you?” — with little success in budging public opinion.

So, naturally, they’re moving to their true last refuge: “Child pornographers and child sex traffickers use encryption! You don’t like child pornographers and child sex traffickers, do you? End-to-end encryption must be stopped FOR THE CHILLLLLDRENNN!”

Yes, terrorists and child pornographers and child sex traffickers do presumably use encryption. They also presumably use cash. And cars. And locks on their front doors.  Just like you.

Government anti-encryption advocates hope you won’t notice that, like those other things, encryption is just a tool. Yes, it can be used to facilitate crime. It can also be used — in fact mostly IS used — to protect your private affairs from the prying eyes of criminals and governments alike.

Government anti-encryption advocates also hope you won’t notice that  criminals and other evil-doers will always have resort to strong encryption if they’re willing to make even minimal efforts to use it. That cat’s been out of the bag for more than 30 years, since Phil Zimmerman released PGP (the first widely used “public key” encryption application) in 1991. Game over, voyeurs.

End-to-end encryption — encryption built directly into apps and requiring little or no effort to invoke — brings the benefits of online privacy to everyday Internet users. The campaigns against it aren’t aimed at terrorists or child pornographers or child sex traffickers. They’re aimed at you.

The same governments which resist even minimal transparency when it comes to their own operations, declaring huge troves of information “classified” and threatening those who reveal it with lengthy prison sentences, want to peek into your private affairs at will.

Not because they think you’re a terrorist or child pornographer or child sex trafficker, but because they consider themselves entitled to run your life and can’t abide anything which might get between them and that entitlement.

If encryption should be forbidden, it should be forbidden to governments, not to the rest of us.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “‘For the children’: last refuge of anti-encryption scoundrels,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Palm Beach, Florida Post, 01/28/22
• “Anti-encryption scoundrels,” by Thomas L. Knapp, The Philippine Star [web and print], 01/29/22

On January 19, US Senate Democrats tried and failed to pass a one-time exception to that body’s practice of the parliamentary delaying tactic known as the “filibuster.” Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) put together half of a slam-dunk plan that should have passed with overwhelming support. But it didn’t because, well, Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and those darn Republicans.

Yes, you read the above correctly. For probably the first time ever, I (partially) agree with Chuck Schumer on something.

Let’s start with the half he got wrong: He wanted the rules change to apply to one, and only one, piece of legislation: The Democratic Party’s “voting rights” bill.

The part he got right was suggesting a reversion of Senate rules to require the old-fashioned “talking filibuster.”

In the old days — that is, until 1987 — the filibuster required effort. To delay the body’s vote on a bill with majority support, a Senator in the minority had to take the floor for debate and refuse to give it up.

So long as the Senator kept talking (standing, without leaning on the podium), it took a super-majority vote (at one time, 67 votes, now 60) to end debate. But if the minority left the debate floor vacant for even  a moment, the majority could  proceed to a vote on the bill.

These days, all a minority Senator has to do to stop a bill from coming to to a vote is object, and if his or her party can marshal 40 or more votes against “cloture,” it can leave the bill in limbo eternal by pretending the matter is still “under debate.”

I’m firmly on record as favoring gridlock. In my opinion, the less the Senate “gets done,” the better off most Americans are. I’d support a constitutional amendment requiring a unanimous, or at least high super-majority vote, to actually pass any bill. It should be hard, not easy, to subject 330 million Americans to legislative dictates.

But I’m also in favor of requiring politicians to actually debate the bills they propose or oppose instead of just blocking consideration of those bills.

Senators spend millions getting elected to, and are paid $174,000 per year to serve in, what Edmund Burke called a “deliberative assembly.” They should have to deliberate their rear ends off to secure victory or impose defeat.

The “talking filibuster” should be restored as a permanent Senate rule instead of offered up as a one-off workaround.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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