23 So if we don’t provide, as Clausewitz would say, the friction, and if we’re not ‘frictioning’ against the ideals and the values that are expressed in the Constitution, then we are part of the prob- lem. C. Austin Fitts: I would say it this way: We have a covenant. We have a group agreement, and that group agreement at a spiritual and cul- tural level is unbelievably powerful. So around 1996, you would hear many Americans say spon- taneously, “Hey, it’s a free country.” In other words, “I don’t like you. You don’t like me. But I honor your right to be free, to have a right to have opportunity, to have a right to own property. So I respect free speech for you to say whatever you want.” That was a covenant where Americans – no mat- ter what their background was – afforded each other a kind of respect. Cynthia McKinney: We had the Bill of Rights. We could say, “It’s my right,” and the others would say, “Yeah, it’s a right.” During the Civil Rights movement, you would have black attorneys representing the Klan in free speech cases because, at the end of the day, the ability of the Klan to articulate their vision must remain intact so that the rest of us – in- cluding blacks – can articulate our vision. There have been justifications for the erosions that have taken place of our rights in the Bill of Rights to the extent that we had a President who said, “What’s the Constitution? It’s only a piece of paper.” C. Austin Fitts: In my opinion, it’s something very powerful. What you and I have seen, and many people who I talk to about this have seen, is the government break the law repeatedly for many decades now – if not from the very begin- ning. They say, “We’re not following it anyway. Who cares?” The reality is that if you think these people are breaking the Constitution now, wait until you see what they can do if they tear it up. We did a great Solari Report with Constitutional scholar Edwin Vieira about why you shouldn’t have a Constitutional Convention. If you do, they can tear it up. And if you think they’re bad now, wait until you see what they can do once they tear it up. What I try to impress on people is having the formal law be what it is now. That still gives us a tremendous spiritual and cultural covenant, but it also makes it much harder and much more expensive to break it. Given how much they’re breaking it now, if you tear it up, we’re talking about a world where there are no property rights, where there are no human rights. We’re talking about an excep- tionally totalitarian society, and I would argue slavery as well. I always try to get my subscribers to watch the Aaron Russo video where he talks about how the Rockefellers want everybody microchipped. They’re going to do things like that. Cynthia McKinney: They’ve already started doing things like that. C. Austin Fitts: Exactly! Cynthia McKinney: I was in the Congress when they passed the legislation to require all farm animals to be chipped. That was the be- ginning and I clearly understood where that was headed. The divergence of the practice from the ideal is what caused me to take stock of myself. First of all, it made me take stock of our political system, and then I took stock of myself. At some point, if the people of the United States don’t engage when their ideals and the legitimacy of the state is being abridged, then the blowback from those actions and behaviors comes back to the people of the US. Is that right or is that not right? You talk about the targeting of civilians. This is something that I’m grappling with right now. When do we stop being civilians? C. Austin Fitts: Under the Constitution, we are responsible for everything that the United States does. Our property is responsible for supporting the debt because our property and even we are collateral. If the state goes down or the state loses legitima- cy and there are financial or legal ramifications to us, we are on the hook.