Posted on 01/09/2018 2:49:30 PM PST by Mafe
A great many people – especially conservatives – reverence the Constitution, consider that it has been abused and that if only the doctrines expressed within were revived and respected, all would be well with America again.
This, of course, is a kind of children’s bedtime story – and approximates reality to about the same degree as the story of the Three Little Pigs.
The Constitution was peddled and imposed on us by men like Alexander Hamilton, a grasper after power who very openly loathed the ideas expressed by men like Jefferson in his Declaration (and even more so in his Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions).
Hamilton and his faction – they were called Federalists, which meant then what it means today – intended to create a centralized government on the British model, but without a hereditary monarch. The Bill of Rights was just barely added, in order to sooth the (rightly, as it turned out ) suspicious, such as George Mason of Virginia.
Patrick Henry smelled a rat.
At any rate, the fact remains that the Constitution was written with great calculation by lawyers – who are trained in and well understand the meaning and potential use of words – in such as way as to assure the expansion of federal power via (among other things) the purposely open-ended Commerce Clause and deliberately nebulous phrases such as “general welfare” that can be – and have been – interpreted to mean . . . anything those who control the levers of the federal government wish it to mean.
Including – as actually happened during the Roosevelt Years – that a man farming on his own land whose produce never leaves his land let alone the state is nonetheless subject to federal regulation, because his actions “affect” Interstate Commerce.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
By the way, I am glad that Aaron Burr shot Hamilton to death. He deserved it for opposing liberty.
Eric, who wrote this drivel is a complete asshole. He is a liberal who spends his time rewriting history.
Dude needs to read the 10th Amendment.
Why write enumerated powers for the FED and then give them a wide open anything goes clause?
This analysis doesn’t pass the smell test.
I am reading through the pieces in The Debate on the Constitution, part of the Library of America series. All of the anti-Federalists who were against ratifying the Constitution pretty much saw what would happen.
Both the Federalist and the anti-Federalist pieces are well worth reading. There was an astounding amount of informed analysis and opinion written between September 1787 and August 1788. Two volumes, less than $50 from Amazon.
Without the Constitution, we would likely have been spit apart and devolved into smaller nations or re-absorbed by England.
New York and Massachusettes were open to that. It was the war of 1812, which showed we were a United Country to the rest of the world and made England live up to its treaty terms.
Your post deserves a barf alert.
You don’t know sh!t about Hamilton.
I can’t get past the fact that conservatives reverence the Constitution. I thought reverence was a noun. Revere is what conservatives do with the Constitution. So I will never know what the writer is trying to say because I have concluded that he is less smart than I am.
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The constitution is 99% restraint on government power.
It is chiefly a list of the things government cannot do.
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The author of this article is a functional moron.
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Piss and moan all you want about Hamilton, he's the guy who wrote this:
If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair. The usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo. The smaller the extent of the territory, the more difficult will it be for the people to form a regular or systematic plan of opposition, and the more easy will it be to defeat their early efforts. Intelligence can be more speedily obtained of their preparations and movements, and the military force in the possession of the usurpers can be more rapidly directed against the part where the opposition has begun. In this situation there must be a peculiar coincidence of circumstances to insure success to the popular resistance.ML/NJThe obstacles to usurpation and the facilities of resistance increase with the increased extent of the state, provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them. The natural strength of the people in a large community, in proportion to the artificial strength of the government, is greater than in a small, and of course more competent to a struggle with the attempts of the government to establish a tyranny. But in a confederacy the people, without exaggeration, may be said to be entirely the masters of their own fate. Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress. How wise will it be in them by cherishing the union to preserve to themselves an advantage which can never be too highly prized!
(Federalist No. 28, excerpt)
The Commerce Clause has been sodomized by the Congres$hitter$ for decades, and expended evermore due to USSC rulings. This is no different than the 14th Amendment.
I don't particularly like this article because it's not that well thought out. But I think this is going to be one of those marathon threads, and our group should get involved.
The constitution is NOT a living document. Never was written as a living document and never will be a living document.
And it has no practical enforcement mechanism. Therefore, in practice government can do whatever the legislature, executive, and judiciary conspire to do.
The downfall of the American Republic began when we abandoned the practice of tar and feathers.
<> All of the anti-Federalists who were against ratifying the Constitution pretty much saw what would happen.<>
When were their fears fulfilled?
The Commerce Clause was designed to be the glue that held the states together. Unfortunately, activist judges have interpreted it much more broadly than was ever intended.
I reject that premise...
THREAD REJECTED! unread...
Moving right along...
If you include waging open war against states, then 1861 might be a good guess
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