The Wolf’s Mouth — Year Four (January 2, 2018)
To: Mr. Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Treasury Secretary
Dear Mr. Mnuchin:
For the fourth consecutive year, I am bypassing the U.S. Treasury and sending voluntary tax payments directly to the Defense Department, the Veterans Administration, and assorted charities, educational institutions and law enforcement agencies. You may recall that I first told you of my ongoing protest in a letter dated January 24, 2017 (copy attached). In that letter, I also told you about a web site I’d created–www.newguardsforliberty.com–to explain why a law-abiding, 68-year-old grandpa of arguably sound mind would embark on such a fool’s errand.
If you have been to the site, you know that my action was triggered by the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act ruling on June 28, 2012. In its ruling the Court decreed that the federal government has the authority to dictate the life and death healthcare choices of 300-plus million Americans. In doing so, it joined a grotesquely-partisan Congress and a double-talking White House in the most lawless, fraudulent power grab in our nation’s history.
True believers in our nation’s founding principle of consensual government realized the ruling had “fundamentally transformed” the Constitution of the United States. In the hands of a cabal of five unelected and lifetime-tenured lawyers on the public payroll, what was originally crafted as a security pact among the sovereign states and their citizens became an instrument of unconditional surrender to the federal government. Tragically, June 28, 2012 was the day the rule of law died in America.
For decades I had silently submitted as the federal government repeatedly exceeded the strict constraints imposed by the Constitution. I knew that submission was no longer an option. The time had come to emulate Thomas Jefferson’s, Benjamin Franklin’s and George Washington’s defiant refusal to consent to a lawless government which had forfeited its legitimate authority over them. Only if like-minded citizens rose up in opposition, I was certain, would America remain–in Ronald Reagan’s phrase–“a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”
God’s Grace is free; liberty is not. America’s Founders pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to secure it. Their heirs did likewise. Which brings us to now. If liberty is to survive, we the people must revive the rule of law by restoring limited, constitutional government. To those willing to join the ranks of Freedom’s First Responders, I have a simple message: Let’s roll!
Yours cordially,
Ray Cedor Jr.
freedomandthewolfsmouth 