Are You a Citizen of the United States?

“Are you a citizen of the United States?”
©Mark Pitrone
10-11-03

Are you a citizen of the United States? That seems a silly question, doesn’t it? The vast majority of folks in this country, or at least those who frequent this website, would immediately pipe up, “You’re darn straight, I am, Buddy, and if you say anything against MY country, I’ll pop you on the snout.”

Let me assure you, I would never say anything against these united States. I love this union enough to have given her 22 years of my life in military service, and would gladly lay down my life in any just and Constitutional cause into which she enters. However, most people of this land have become quite ignorant of the state of affairs within the country to which they swear allegiance.

At our founding, there were no citizens of the united States, as such. The Declaration did not make provision for a united States citizen. It says, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, ...”. Notice, please, the word ‘people’. The word Citizen is used but once in the Declaration, in regard to the usurpations of the king in constraining ‘our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, ...’.

The question that comes to my mind is, ‘Who is a citizen? Or, rather, what did the founders mean when they said Citizen?’ At the time of the founding, the American language had not been standardized. The nearest thing we have to the meanings of the words used by our fathers is the dictionary that DID standardize American English, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language (hereinafter, Webster’s 1828). Webster’s 1828 has this definition of: “CITIZEN, n., 1. The native of a city, or an inhabitant who enjoys the freedom and privileges of the city in which he resides; the freeman of a city, as distinguished from a foreigner, or one not entitled to its franchises.” Do you see that City is the root of Citizen?

Our founders expected that we would be free, independent, sovereign people, governing our own selves as our consciences dictated. Our government was to lie within ourselves and in such voluntary associations to which we would conjoin. Government was reposited in the individual, not in judges, legislatures and executives (priests, princes and kings). The Citizens to which the founders spoke in the Declaration were fellow-soldiers, fellow-laborers, fellow-heirs, in short, brethren, and not necessarily members of the same nation. In fact, up to this point even the Confederacy of the united States of America did not exist. The assumption was that each individual was his own king, and had all the prerogatives appertaining thereto. They were countrymen, to be sure, but not American Citizens as we understand the term.

The Declaration states that the people held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,..." which wicked old king George was abridging, denying, infringing and just plain old trouncing upon. Webster’s 1828 says, “SELF-EV'IDENT, a. Evident without proof or reasoning; that produces certainty or clear conviction upon a bare presentation to the mind; as a self-evident proposition or truth. That two and three make five, is self-evident .” Likewise, that all men are created equal and gifted with rights by their Creator that are unalienable. A self-evident thing just is! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Unalienable is a word that needs defining for the vast majority of Americans, not because they can’t discern for themselves the meaning of the term, but because they don’t think in such terms - have, in fact, been trained NOT to think in such terms by our public indoctrination (re-education) system. Americans are, by and large, lazy oafs when it comes to their liberties; accepting the crumbs that drop from their master’s table rather than enjoying the feast of freedom.

Webster’s 1828 says this: “UNA'LIENABLE, a. Not alienable; that cannot be alienated; that may not be transferred; as unalienable rights.” Not alienable? What is it to aliene something?
Again, Webster’s 1828 says, “ALIE'NE, v.t. [L. alieno.] 1. To transfer title or property to another; to sell. Nor could he aliene the estate, even with the consent of the Lord.” To aliene is to take legal possession of that which is rightfully someone else’s. In feudal England the king gave letters of patent to a Lord, a grant of lands. The Lord could then provide estates to faithful servants by grants of a portion of his own lands. An unalienable grant was one that even the Lord of the manor could not allow another to have. This grant must, of necessity, have been made by someone of higher authority than the Lord, i.e.; the king. Or YHVH himself (YHVH is the covenant name of the Creator of the Universe and King above all kings)?

Another word we use interchangeably with unalienable is, “INA'LIENABLE, a. [L. alieno, alienus.] Unalienable; that cannot be legally or justly alienated or transferred to another. The dominions of a king are inalienable. All men have certain natural rights, which are inalienable. The estate of a minor is inalienable, without a reservation of the right of redemption, or the authority of the legislature.” (Webster’s 1828, emphasis added). The point here is, “The dominions of a king are inalienable.”

Ensconced in the middle of both terms is the word “lien”. You are going to love this. There are two definitions for the word lien in Webster’s 1828. The 2nd and the one most used and accepted in modern usage is, “LIEN, n. [supra.] A legal claim; as a lien upon land.” So, in light of what we’ve seen so far, if something is unalienable/inalienable no one may put a legal claim on it. Your rights, as endowed by your Creator, are unaffected by anyone or anything save him. Now to the 1st definition, “LIEN, the obsolete participle of lie.” In other words, Lien is the past participle of lie - tell an untruth. When one person places any sort of lien against that which is un-alien-able he is lying.

Consider now the usurpations of the USAPATRIOT Act and the worse than useless Department of Homeland Security; tell me who the tyrant is and why you allow it to happen. You are the king with rights that only YHVH can take from you, but by accusation with or without basis the President of the united States and his Attorney General can strip you of your unalienable rights, as they have done to Yaser Esam Hamdi and others. This is but a dress rehearsal of the actions to come.

The use of the term unalienable means that the founders saw each individual as king of his dominion, answerable to YHVH alone, and not some central government thousands of miles away, regardless the lies of the federal government, which has lien repeatedly. The key phrase in that last sentence is ‘answerable to YHVH alone.’ The People of these united States of America were themselves to be priests and kings of YHVH. The great majority of the founders envisioned this nation they were creating to be the embodiment and fulfillment of Torah that YHVH had given and promised to Israel in Exodus 19:5-6, “Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.”

Our founders expected us to be the light of the world, a city set on a hill to which all men could look for hope. As long as we kept that perspective as a people we were citizens of a kingdom much larger than the united States of America, endowed with rights by our Creator. We were kings answerable to the King of kings and none else. Since we, as a people, have lost that vision, we have become serfs and vassals answerable to the feudal Lords of the manor in Washington, D.C., because we failed to do our due diligence. It is time once again to water the tree of Liberty: by reading and taking to heart the principles in our founding documents, thinking about what they say and what they mean to us and our posterity, and getting angry, fighting mad at the usurpations to the extent that we take back what was delivered to us by those men 230 years ago. We, the people, are the kings! They, the politicians, are the serfs. It is time we acted that way.

That is what we need to do. But have we the gutz to get it done? I fear for our future, since I fear the answer is a resounding, “Who gives a rat’s rear-end? There’s an episode of ‘Law and Order’ coming on!” I’m afraid there are too many citizens of the United States and not enough kings.

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