About

The Equalizer Amendment is a result of a life-long search for a solution to the problem of gradual loss of freedom in the U. S. It evolved from the recapturefreedom.com web site that Dr. E. B. Stoneham set up in 2003. The site offered a set of ten constitutional amendments designed to make corrections based on the last couple of centuries of experience that we have gathered under the Constitution of the United States. Feedback and suggestions were requested from readers, and the amendments were improved.

As early as 2006 recapturefreedom.com put up a prediction of a good chance that a tax strike might occur in 2010. Instead, we got Taxed Enough Already (Tea) Parties and the prospect of a major turnover in the 2010 election. Still, for a four-year prediction the web site was not far off. The predictions are improving, though, and the one-year predictions particularly should be more accurate.

As most of us know through experience, the elections by themselves will not result in a long-lasting solution to the ongoing two-steps-downward-for-every-step-upward loss of freedom. It has been the contention of recapturefreedom.com that amendments to the Constitution are needed as an additional ingredient.

Many people have been consulted on this issue, and the result has been that ten amendments, some of which are quite radical, are way beyond the appetite of most people. We’d be lucky if more than one out of ten people would even read one amendment. Moreover, if an effective amendment is written in legalese, no one will understand it. Also, people have objected that an amendment would accomplish nothing if the government continues to ignore the Constitution. And how are you going to get an amendment passed if a reluctant government is the only entity that can put it up for ratification? If you allow the states to propose it, then you end up with a constitutional convention that would likely be co-opted by elitists and used to dilute the amendment or make some additional ill-conceived changes to the Constitution. Some people think that the only real solution is a civil war. (Not everyone is aware of the tremendous seething anger out there that has built up over the government usurpation of our freedom. It threatens to explode at any time.)

Putting it all together, recapturefreedom.com decided that in the interest of expedience the more radical changes will have to be left for the creation of a great new country some day in the more distant future. What we need now is a single amendment that can be easily explained and that accomplishes most of what needs to be done. Along with the amendment we need a unique and fun way to get the amendment passed and to create a culture shift that will guarantee that the amendment will actually be enforced for a lasting period of time. The culture shift, in fact, is the more important ingredient.

So, what amendment can address the issues of 80% of the people? What is the common denominator in the losses of freedom that these people have experienced and that they want to reverse? Answer: It is elitism (see “What Is An Elitist?”), the same elitism that underlies slavery. It is the notion that a group of elites should be allowed to lord it over everyone else, putting them all into one-size-fits-all straightjackets. In fact, this problem of elitism appears to be THE universal evil in the governance of every society throughout history!

This notion leads directly to the Equalizer Amendment and to the method of getting it ratified and securing its enforcement. The Equalizer Amendment simply forces the government to obey the same rules as we do, which means that we can go after them in our courts just as easily as they can go after us in theirs. The method for getting it ratified is simply for us, the 80%, to force the elitists to ratify it. If they refuse, we will have a BIG PARTY and a lot of FUN, and there is nothing they can do to stop us. We will ignore their unconstitutional rules and go on to rebuild the economy in spite of them. The only way the elitists will be able to become relevant again will be to humble themselves and ratify the amendment. We won’t stop until the amendment is fully enforced. The next election will replace any unreformed elitists with statesmen.

The originator of recapturefreedom.com and the Equalizer Amendment, E. B. Stoneham, hails from ancestors who first stepped foot in America in the first two decades of the 1600s. He attended U. C. Berkeley as a physics major from the year of the Free Speech Movement (1964) through the year of People’s Park (1969) and avidly observed first-hand the rabble-rousing methods of demonstrators, the crowd-control tactics of the police, the martial-law riot-control measures of sheriffs and the National Guard, and the distortions of the often-clueless national news media. He served two years in the Army during the Vietnam era, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned his Ph. D. in applied physics at Stanford. He started his Silicon Valley career in electronics at the then-revolutionary Hewlett Packard and after thirteen years jumped into startups, riding the Silicon Valley roller coaster. In 2005 he completed the writing of a book entitled “The Laws of Life” that, starting from first principles, laid the groundwork for the amendments that were initially published on recapturefreedom.com. He raised a family, is married to a legal immigrant, and is currently engaged in consulting and startups including Stoneham Innovations, an LED lighting manufacturer.

"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."

-- Mark Twain

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