The NJ Chapter of Oath Keepers has been vilified and branded as a domestic terrorist threat to the State of New Jersey.  According to the memorandum posted on the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Prepardness website, the NJ Oath Keepers are "Militia Extremists".

Our response is thus, ​

and the full response can be found on our website.  Yes, I say our website, as I am the North Jersey Regional Director of the NJ Oath Keepers and am appalled that we would be branded as such.  

First and foremost the NJ Oath Keepers only mission is to remind those that are currently serving that the "Oath" is to the Constitution, not the Commander.  We reach, teach and inspire our fellow citizens to learn and understand their role in the self governance process.  We teach that we are not to be ruled over but governed, governed by those that serve at our behest.

Taking Over the Republican Party
Nelson Hultberg

One of the biggest fallacies in politics today is the claim that we, as conservatives and libertarians, can only be effective if we stay loyal to the Republican Party and work to gain control of it by electing more free-market conservatives every election year. 

We at AFR believe such thinking to be tragically misguided. To expect the Republican Party to challenge the modern day juggernaut of statism is as foolish as expecting socialist professors to instill Americanism into our youth. It won't happen anymore than the planets will one day reverse their orbits. This is because the members of the GOP hierarchy who control the party have bought into the  collectivist ideologies of Karl Marx and J.M. Keynes. Thus they want the same thing that Democrats want - a society in which "equality of results" replaces "equality of rights." They merely want it to be established more gradually than do the Democrats. 

Conservatives have been trying to take over the GOP for more than 40 years now by electing "conservative legislators" to Congress; yet nothing has changed. The Republican Party continues to give us relentlessly expanding government. It continues to exploit, lie to, and make fools out of conservatives. 

Those who continue to cling to the hope that they can transform the Republican Party into an engine of freedom are like battered wives who continue to stick around to take their husbands abusive beatings. The marriage is over. Conservatives, libertarians, and patriots must abandon the GOP.

The GOP Hierarchy

The problem with the conservative strategy is that electing conservative legislators to Congress can never bring about a takeover of the party because the GOP hierarchy buys off 90 percent of the legislators that we send. Who and what is this GOP hierarchy? It is the vast network of elite intellectuals, bankers, and corporate leaders throughout America that make up the "neoconservative establishment." 

The intellectual sector of this hierarchy is comprised of prominent scholars and pundits such as William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Charles Krauthammer - prestigious organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Hudson Institute, and the Foreign Policy Initiative - scholarly magazines such as Foreign Affairs, Commentary, Public Interest, and The Weekly Standard. 

Completing the hierarchy are the major bankers of the Federal Reserve system and the myriad of corporate moguls throughout the nation. The members of this GOP hierarchy call themselves "neoconservative" because it makes it easier for them to sell massive statism to the American people. Unfortunately allegiance to the founding principles of America is not in their lexicon. 

These prominent scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads are not true conservatives (and they are certainly not libertarian) because they don't believe in the fundamental base of America - which is the Founders' spirit of free enterprise and limited government. Yet this GOP hierarchy continues to claim that its Republican Party is a vehicle for freedom and adherence to the Constitution. They make such a claim because they know Americans still adhere to such values. But their claim is as deceptive as the pickpocket's brush against your coat in a crowded subway.

The scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads of this hierarchy wield great power, both ideologically and financially - enough so to buy off most of the incoming patriotic congressmen. Such newcomers to Washington adopt the GOP hierarchy's "pseudo conservatism" soon after their arrival in the capital because they know if they don't vote in step with neoconservatism, they will receive no ideological and financial support for re-election from the party and its influential hierarchy. 

Preferring an easy road to re-election, almost all new patriot arrivals, thus, sell out their "true conservative" principles to stay in Washington. They cross over the aisle and gradually turn into advocates of statism. This is why sending conservatives to Congress has gotten us nowhere over the past four decades and will get us nowhere in the future. Incoming conservatives don't stay conservative; they are bought off. Lord Acton told us why over a century ago.

Thus it is impossible to take over the Republican Party by just sending more conservative legislators to Washington. To get control of the GOP, we first have to replace the neocon ideologues who control the party - i.e., the hierarchy. A whole new generation of scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads will have to be ushered in. This will require 70-80 years to bring about. Shifts of this magnitude take many decades. America doesn't have this kind of time. 

Ideological Change Works Slowly

As proof, let's examine the time span of liberalism's takeover of the Republican Party. The actual political takeover began with Richard Nixon in 1968. But liberalism's "political takeover" of the GOP had to be preceded first by its "ideological takeover" of the educational institutions of America - the schools, the churches, the media, the publishers, and the movie industry.

This is why converting the Republican Party to "freedom and conservatism" (as many Tea Party members and other activists are trying to do) can never happen. Because conservatives do not control the schools, the churches, the media, the publishers, and the movie industry in this country. These were the vital factors in liberalism's takeover of the GOP during the 20th century. These five institutions relentlessly spewed out collectivism, which shaped the minds and motives of the scholars, pundits, bankers, moguls, and institute heads who joined the GOP and formed its present hierarchy. Without this "mind shaping," liberalism could not have taken over the Republican Party.

Thus if conservatives are to take over the GOP, it will require that we first gain ideological control of the the schools, the churches, the media, the publishers, and the Hollywood movie studios so as to shape a new hierarchy. This will require at least 70 years to accomplish (assuming we can actually do it). 

The liberal takeover of these cultural institutions was a 70-year process that began in the early 20th century with the Progressives' encroachments into our school system and then throughout the rest of our society. Seventy years later they had gained control of the GOP during the Nixon-Ford administrations and made it the little sister to the Democrat Party. But they were only able to do this because they had also gained control of the schools, churches, media, publishers, and Hollywood.

Turning a political party around is like turning a huge aircraft carrier around. There is a delay between the time you start turning the steering helm to when the ship finally completes its turn. The steering helm of a political party is the ideology of its hierarchy, which is determined by the schools, churches, media, publishers, and movie industry. These five institutions must be turned first if the party itself is to be turned. This cannot be done overnight. 

Therefore, if conservatives intend to take over control of the GOP, they must prepare for a 70 year struggle. Unfortunately, America doesn't have this kind of time. Economic collapse looms over the horizon. And tyranny looms on the other side of the collapse like it has with all political-economic breakdowns of countries throughout history. In times of disintegrating chaos and peril, people who are ignorant of the causes of their chaos and breakdown always opt for order and stability in the form of regimentation and dictatorship. 

Freedom's Last Stand

There is a chance, however, to save the country if we can avoid the dictatorial takeover that is sure to be promoted in the aftermath of the coming collapse. But to do this, the American people must be told the truth about what has brought on the economic crises we are experiencing at present, and what must be done to properly climb out of the economic mega-crisis that looms up ahead. 

We must climb out of the coming collapse in the direction of the Founding Fathers and decentralized government, not in the direction of the globalists and World Government. Unfortunately the Democrat and Republican hierarchies are committed globalists, ideologically poisoned by the Marxian-Keynesian brainwash that has been seeping into America for many decades. They will never work to return to the Founding Fathers; they will work fervently to usher in a New World Order, a World Bank, and the elimination of American sovereignty.

But there is still a chance to save freedom because a sizeable sector of the people still favor freedom. Most conservatives, libertarians, independents, and blue-collar Democrats (50 percent of the voters) remain opposed to Marxism-Keynesianism if the rudiments are clearly explained to them. They still believe in "honest money" and "limited government." All they need is a courageous, conservative political candidate to explain how we must get back to such values. 

Thus we must bypass the Republican Party and go directly to the people. We must launch an Independent political campaign that will tell the truth to American voters about the Democrat-Republican monopoly and how it is smuggling us into a centralized dictatorship via Marxism and Keynesianism.

Stopping the Drift

In conclusion, trying to take over the Republican Party by voting in more true conservative congressmen will never stop America's dictatorial drift. We've been attempting to do this for over four decades now. And the freedom advocates we send to Washington continue to get bought off by neoconservatism as fast as we send them.

There's a much better way to fight. Our goal at AFR is to recruit a prominent free-market conservative such as Ted Cruz or Mike Lee or Michele Bachmann to run an Independent campaign on AFR's Four Pillars of Reform for our tax, monetary, immigration, and foreign policy systems in the next presidential election (like Ross Perot in 1992). By going directly to the people with the truth, such a patriot, conservative campaign would give us a chance to save the country. 

In this way we can challenge the Washington establishment and unify all conservatives, libertarians, independents, and blue-collar Democrats into a vibrant grassroots force. We believe a nationally-known, free-market conservative, running as an Independent, would get 40-45 percent of the vote and win the 2016 election. In doing so, his campaign would act as the launch for a new political party - the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT PARTY - that would further the fight into the future. For more information on this cause, go to our website, www.afr.org.

Just what do all the numbers mean when it comes to how much Gold I am buying?

Some sell in grams, others grains and still others in varying degrees of troy ounces.  Listed are the conversion from one to the other and the definitions of each unit of measure.  Usually the smallest unit of measure for our purpose of buying and selling is gram.  Some online outfits use grains when buying into a storage situation.

Here is a quick look at the numbers.

• 24 grains=1 dwt (pennyweight)
• 1 pennyweight =.05 troy ounce
• 1 gram=.643 pennyweight
• 1 grain = 0.0648 grams
• 4 grains = 1 carat
• 15.432 grains = 1 Gram
• 480 grains = 1 troy ounce

Here are the basic conversion ratios.
Use these formulas to convert!

• Carats to Dwt x by .12860
• Carats to Grams x by .2
• Dwt to Carats x by 7.776
• Dwt to Grams x by 1.5552
• Dwt to Troy oz x by .05
• Grams to Carats x by 5.0
• Grams to Dwt x by .64301
• Avoir Oz to Troy oz x by .91146
• Avoir Oz to Grams x by 28.3495
• Troy Oz to Avoir oz x by 1.091

Troy Ounce:
The traditional unit of weight for precious metals and gems.

• 1 troy ounce = 480 grains
• 1 troy ounce = 24 scruples
• 1 troy ounce = 20 pennyweights (North American jewelery trade)
• 1 troy ounce = 1.097 ordinary ounce
• 1 troy ounce = 8 drams
• 1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 grams.
• 1 troy ounce = 120 carats
• 1 troy ounce = 155.52 metric carats (diamonds / precious stones).
• 3.75 troy ounces = 10 tolas (Indian sub-continent)
• 6.02 troy ounces = 5 taels (Hong Kong)
• 12 troy ounce=1 troy pound
• 14.583 troy ounce =16 avoirdupois ounce (1Pound)
• 32.15 troy ounces = 1 kilogramme (Kilo)
• 32,150 troy ounces = 1 metric ton (1,000 kilos)
• 1000 troy ounces = 31.1 kilograms

Pennyweight (dwt):
The pennyweight was the weight of a silver penny in medieval England.
It is no coincidence that there were 240 pennies to the English pound.
240 silver pennies were equivalent to a pound of silver.
The word sterling applies both to the English pound and to the standard
purity of silver.

• 1 pennyweight = 24 grains (dwt) (1 old time French penny)
• 1.55 grams=1 pennyweight (dwt)
• 20 dwt=1 troy ounce
• 240 pennyweights = 1 pound troy
• 24 grains=1 dwt
• 1 pennyweight =.05 troy ounce
• 1 gram=.643 pennyweight

Gram:

• 1 gram =.03215 troy ounce
• 1 gram =.643 pennyweight
• 1.555 grams = 1 pennyweight (dwt)
• 1 gram =0.00267923 apothecary or troy pound
• 1 gram =0.00220462 avoirdupois pound
• 1 gram =0.0321507 apothecary or troy ounce
• 1 gram =0.564383 avoirdupois dram
• 1 gram =0.257206 apothecary or troy dram
• 1 gram =0.6430149 pennyweight
• 1 gram =0.771618 scruple
• 1 gram =15.4324 grains
• 1 gram =1x10^-6 metric ton
• 1 gram =1x10^-4 myriagram
• 1 gram =0.001 kilogram
• 1 gram =5 metric carats
• 1 gram =1000 milligrams
• 1 gram =1x10^6 microgram
• 1 Gram = 5 Carats

For those that need a clear understanding of the perception of the Oath Keepers, I offer this piece.

It started with Katrina. The sight of U.S. military troops, law enforcement officers, and armed government contractors seizing firearms from citizens in the aftermath of that terrible storm shocked the conscience of Yale constitutional law scholar Stewart Rhodes. That these actions were later recognized as wrong by the U.S. Supreme Court did little to assuage Rhodes' concerns. The fact remained that an illegal precedent had taken place, and could well occur again; indeed, it appeared that that the seeds sown in Louisiana might not only take root, but germinate elsewhere, as well.


http://www.policemag.com/channel/patrol/articles/2013/04/who-are-the-oath-keepers.aspx

These historical vignettes will lead you from the very beginnings — the American Revolution, where the paper Continental Dollar depreciated in value by 1000 – 1; to the Constitutional debates where the founders thought they had stripped the federal government of the power to print money; to the work of Alexander Hamilton putting America onto a sound monetary footing leading to an American golden age; into the 19th century and the First and Second Banks of the United States, the precursors of the Federal Reserve System; to the Civil War greenbacks, the resumption of gold convertibility, the prairie populists and the “free silver” movement culminating in the most famous speech in political history, William Jennings Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech; to a 20th century defined by an erosion and then repudiation of the gold standard, and also by world wars and crises; to the history that is being made today.

http://thegoldstandardnow.org/beginnings-of-the-us-gold-standard

Karl Marx was asked once how he could justify advocating a political system of slavery for the individual, which is what socialism is. He replied that, socialism is not slavery; it is a "new kind of freedom." As all perceptive students of history know, the intellectuals of Europe bought into such Alice in Wonderland sophistry and plunged into the twentieth century nightmare of collectivist tyranny. But unfortunately so did American intellectuals about 30 years later when the Progressives of Woodrow Wilson's era established the Creature from Jekyl Island to usher in centralized government banking and the progressive income tax to "spread the wealth around."

Socialism is not really so bad, reasoned the American intellectual community. If we think about it, it actually is a "new kind of freedom." We just have to do what the Red Queen and the Mad Hatter advocated. We have to change the meaning of the words that define the fundamental values of our lives. After all, there is no objective reality; words can mean whatever we want them to mean. All we have to do is teach Marx's new definition of freedom to the young at an early enough age, and when they grow into adulthood they will not think of a government-dominated society as slavery at all. It will be a "new kind of freedom" to them.

Americans never bought into Lenin's violent revolutionary socialism, but they did buy into the Fabians' democratic evolutionary socialism. Fabian ideas in Britain were readily picked up by the American progressives and liberals of the twentieth century. This redefinition of values has been consuming us now for 100 years ever since the Creature from Jekyl Island and the tax revenuers took over Washington. The progressives and liberals have even redefined their redefinitions. Fascism, being basically the same as socialism, is now acceptable in the mix.

What is horrifying is that Barack Obama's election victory is tied directly to this corruption of values. We have now elected, for a second time, a man who was raised by communists in Hawaii. Obama's mind was forged from the likes of Frank Marshall Davis, a powerful and radical communist apparatchick of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Davis was Obama's constant companion from the age of 9 to 18 before he went off to Occidental College in Los Angeles. His worldview is thus the Marxian sophistry that socialism is a "new kind of freedom." In the mind of Obama, individuals like Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart are not entrepreneurial benefactors to their fellow man; they are evil rich people who exploit their fellow man. These evil rich need to be leveled down. And the way to do it is insidiously, governmentally with ever-expanding redistribution of wealth programs and ever-expanding monetary inflation. 

One of Ayn Rand's powerful insights in Atlas Shrugged is that dictatorships take over because the people actually approve of them. She called it the "sanction of the victim." This attitude now permeates the American electorate. Nietzsche's "slave mentalities" dominate the throngs of voters that determine what our government is to do. The great majority of Americans are demonstrating that they actually want to be enslaved.

Rand also made the following observation: When asked once why she voted Republican if she thought both parties had sold out to collectivism, she replied that both parties are headed toward the abyss, but Democrats wish to charge toward it and Republicans wish to creep toward it. She, no doubt, felt that we have more time to educate the people as to what is happening with Republicans in power.

Well, America just ran out of time this past election night. A majority of American voters indicated that they believe government owes them a living along with health care, security, and self-esteem. They indicated that they are very comfortable with the Fabian march into socialist-fascism that has been taking place ever since the Creature was instituted in 1913. They indicated that they believe rich people don't earn their wealth; they steal it from the kindly masses by siphoning off the surplus productivity of their labor and reducing them to grinding poverty. (This is the fallacious "labor theory of value" that Marx perpetuated.)

Unfortunately this fallacious reasoning is why so many Americans have become so slothful and are choosing to vote for a living rather than work for a living. It is the reason why so many productive men and women in America are poisoned with guilt and now tolerate the egregious, confiscatory taxes that are destroying the dynamism of our economy and the sanity of our lives. Justice and prosperity cannot be built by catering to slothful masses with theoretical fallacies.

The slothful masses now control America through an Orwellian czar in Washington whose mentor was a rabid communist apparatchik in the 1970s, and whose close advisors (Bill Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, Valerie Jarrett, etc.) have always been radical leftist haters of America. This Orwellian czar is now a lame duck President and doesn't have to run again. All that blocks him from ravaging our rights and freedoms is a supine Senate and a timid array of House Republicans. Will these political sycophants be able to stand up to him and the new hordes of entitlement seekers that bolster him with their eager votes? Not likely. Congress will, instead, begin to reach out to the new entitlement seekers along with the pressing hordes of illegals and their comrades waiting in the wings for entrance to America.

Jean Raspail's Camp of the Saints looms over the horizon. Congressional sycophants will begin to emulate Fox News analyst, Kirsten Powers, who gleefully reported on election night: "We are now a brown nation." They will begin to reevaluate their position on the illegals. They will reason that another 15 million illiterate anti-Americans amidst us is no problem. To paraphrase Nixon, "We're all Multiculturalists now."

Thus Obama will push full-blown for amnesty for the illegals and Marx's redefinition of slavery into a "new kind of freedom." We will charge toward the abyss at a speed never before employed. Obama and the Creature will gobble up the last of our freedoms. America will become a giant replica of Greece.  


------------------------
Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic (AFR.org). His articles have appeared in such publications as the Dallas Morning News, The American Conservative, Insight, The Freeman, and Liberty, as well as on numerous Internet sites such as The Daily Bell, Financial Sense, and Safe Haven. He is also the author of a soon to be released book on political philosophy, The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values. Email him at: [email protected] 

Reprinted from the French Connection

This is a link to a very well written article documenting the course of "Money" as it has become!