Posted on 03/01/2017 11:40:10 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The ban may have passed Constitutional muster then given the Arab oil embargo but other than keeping domestic oil prices low what purpose would a ban serve today? The clause I cited earlier was placed in the Constitution to keep Congress from taxing Southern exports namely cotton. The South feared that the northern states would tax cotton exports as a way of making cotton cheaper for them to purchase. An oil ban seems to me to be the modern day equivalent of banning or taxing cotton exports.
Given your tag line I would think you sympathies would lie in a southern heritage.
Since a ban is essentially an infinite tax one cannot be imposed except for reason of domestic security, war, etc.. It is hard to see how oil should be singled out for banning and not food stuffs, coal, steel, aircraft, IT technologies, and etc..
The patriot and the businessman are not birds of a feather. They may both be birds but they view the world and history differently. I can’t understand you and you can’t understand me. So lets’ stop trying. You aren’t wrong just need to be reigned in from time to time. Think of the patriot as supplying the economic guard rails.
There is no higher patriotic duty then to preserve the right to go about one’s life free from the unjust coercive use of government force of arms. That right is enshrined in many different ways in our Constitution. What is the patriotic compelling reason to prevent a fellow citizen from maximizing the fruits of his labor by singling out oil, from amongst all exports, for an export ban or tax? If the government has a need for income to pursue its constitutional duties then the proper patriotic way to do it would be to tax all exports equally. Assuming of course you amend the US Constitution to allow it.
Maybe you can provide examples of some early USA patriots who were not businessmen?
You first reply seemed to defend a tariff on oil exports. Would that not be patently un-patriotic since it would violate the US Constitution?
Maybe we disagree on what it means to be a Patriot.
They're called wars. Look war up on Google sometime.
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Again, why single out oil? If there is a war shouldn’t all exports to an enemy be banned? You would feed the enemy with reported grain? Is oil really the only thing you would ban the exporting of during war?
Jefferson lost the battle in the early 1800s, in trying to fight France and Britain by restricting trade. It did not cripple either country and did not open our shipping lanes which would later be accomplished via a real shooting war.
His views on Merchants, along with Priests and Lawyers, did not make into the Constitution. I will stake my patriotism on defending our Constitution.
By the way a company that produces oil and sells it is not a merchant. Even if you ban Merchants from exporting you will not have banned producers from exporting.
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