How Cognitive Biases are Eroding our Liberty.

A decade or so ago I was in a conversation where a certain religious doctrine was being discussed; when asked my thoughts, I simply responded, “Jesus taught that, too”. Soon after the conversation ended, however, I began looking in Scripture to see where Jesus said what I said He said, but I couldn’t find it. It turns out I was wrong and that I was anchored by my own thoughts of what was true without verifying my conclusion – I was satisfied that my reasoning sounded logical but I failed to see that my logic was circular and my conclusion a lie. The tragedy is that this inept reasoning has found its way into our Federal Government and has served as a dangerous weapon that has effectively undermined the Natural Law of liberty guaranteed us in the U.S. Constitution.

I was satisfied that my reasoning sounded logical but I failed to see that my logic was circular and my conclusion a lie.

McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948) is among a series of cases dealing with the First Amendment’s prohibition against laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. However, we see in McCollum the same cognitive bias that I demonstrated – the use of subjective opinions to proscribe the participation of religion in the public sphere. Nowhere in the Constitution is it found that the government cannot participate in religion or that religion cannot participate in government, yet the justices stated this claim in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)  and reiterated it in McCollum – “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.”  To say that a state or the Federal Govt. cannot even “participate” in religion and that religion cannot participate in a state or Federal Govt. is beyond the pale of reason, given the strong religious underpinnings of this Nation and its laws – indeed, prayers continue to take place in the Senate chambers today as they had been since 1789. See here for the prayers offered in the Senate during the period when judgments on Everson (February 10, 1947) and McCollum (March 8, 1948) were rendered. From the issue of religion, SCOTUS moved to undermine the sanctity of human life.

Roe, et al. v. Wade, Dist. Atty. Of Dallas County, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) stands as the seminal case used by the Federal Government to prohibit a State from outlawing the murder of children (more commonly known as abortion). Yet, the court acknowledged that the American Medical Association (AMA) as early as the mid-1800s held that it was a matter of “popular ignorance” that life only began after “quickening”, that is, the moment in time that a baby could survive outside a mother’s womb (Ibid. 141-142).  But instead of ruling that the States could therefore protect the life of this unborn child, the Court ignored this medical guidance and chose to perpetuate their own opinion that a human life inside a womb was not granted protection under the U.S. Constitution. And, in order to validate this decision, they cited the decision they rendered only a year prior stating, “for we would not have indulged in statutory interpretation favorable to abortion in specified circumstances if the necessary consequence was the termination of life entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection.” The justices relied on their own thoughts to justify their side-stepping of the fact that life begins at conception – a fact the AMA said, “An honest judge on the bench” couldn’t ignore (Ibid. 142).

The point is simply that the FBI didn’t ask (or, couldn’t remember asking?!) questions that would have undermined their own investigation – they didn’t appear to want the facts.

SCOTUS is not the only Federal Arm that has incorporated such bias in their decision making; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has illegally preyed on American citizens under the guise of law because they “believed” but didn’t verify. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) issued warrants at the request of the FBI to spy on American Carter Page based on evidence provided by Christopher Steele and purportedly corroborated by other sources. However, the Office of Inspector General’s (“OIG”) report found that the FBI did not, in fact, have corroborating evidence to support Steele’s findings and that the FBI withheld information from FISC that would have undermined Steele as a reliable source. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application for the first warrant (October 14, 2016) stated that “The FBI does not believe that [Christopher Steele] directly provided this information [contained in an article by Michael Isikoff published in Yahoo News] to the Press.” However, the OIG’s report indicates that personnel related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation believed that Steele was selling his information and that he was the “’Western intelligence source’” mentioned in the Yahoo News article.  Additionally, previous drafts of the FISA application expressly stated that Steele was responsible for leaking the information contained in this article and was thereafter admonished by the FBI.  To double-down on their hypocrisy, the FBI never changed this assertion in the subsequent applications made to FISC for permission to continue spying on Americans even after removing Steele as a contact for leaking information to the Press. The point is simply that the FBI didn’t ask (or, couldn’t remember asking?!) questions that would have undermined their own investigation – they didn’t appear to want the facts. FISC has now reprimanded the FBI and required a plan to be developed that will ensure that no evidence detrimental to a FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications would be withheld from FISC in the future. The Federal System has learned that they simply must create a lie and make others believe that lie in order to erase the Truth from the minds of the people.

Perspective:

The Proverbs say, “Buy the truth, and do not sell it, Also wisdom and instruction and understanding.” Be sure of one thing: the cases presented here are not random blunders. The Constitution behaves as the anchor for our liberty and its tenets must be preserved. Freedom is being arbitrarily taken from the U.S.A. because people don’t take time to learn the Truth – and the consequence is that they don’t notice the chains being slipped around their wrists.

James M. Spillers

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