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What If We Didn't Have a Constitution?
Townhall.com ^ | May 21, 2015 | Judge Andrew Napolitano

Posted on 05/21/2015 11:03:10 AM PDT by Kaslin

What if we didn't have a Constitution? What if the government were elected by custom and tradition, but not by law? What if election procedures and official titles and government responsibilities merely followed those that preceded them, and not because any of this was compelled by law, but because that's what folks came to expect?

What if those elected to office, and those appointed to it, as well, took oaths to uphold the Constitution? What if those who took the oaths promised fidelity to the Constitution? What if the Constitution declares itself to be the supreme law of the land? What if the supreme law of the land means what it says?

What if all in government, from presidents to park rangers, from generals to janitors, from judges to jail guards, take substantially the same oath? What if very few who have taken their oaths take them seriously? What if very few who have taken their oaths have actually read the Constitution? What if very few who have taken their oaths understand the values the Constitution upholds?

What if even fewer understand the historical, moral and legal bases for those values? What if most who took those oaths did so expecting someone else in government to tell them what the Constitution means and how to deal with it?

What if the whole purpose of the Constitution is to limit the government, not to unleash it?

What if the plain language of the Constitution puts clear limits on what the government in America may lawfully do? What if those in government began cutting constitutional corners about 100 years ago and overlooked prohibitions and limitations in the Constitution because they enjoyed exercising power over others and because they thought they knew what was best for everyone?

What if those prohibitions and limitations -- some of which were in the corners that were cut -- were written into the Constitution intentionally to keep the government off the backs of the people?

What if personal liberty is the birthright of all persons? What if government is essentially the negation of that liberty?

What if the Constitution represents the value judgment of Americans that our rights are higher in value than the government's powers to interfere with them? What if those who wrote the Constitution believed that personal liberty is the default position and government power the exception? What if the Constitution means that our rights should be maximum and government minimum?

What if our rights are natural components of our humanity? What if that humanity is a gift from God? What if we were created in His image and likeness? What if the greatest likeness we have with Him and the greatest gift from Him is free will? What if we are perfectly free as He is perfectly free?

What if He created us with such free will that we are free to reject Him? What if we are so free that we are free to reject the government? What logic could underlie an argument that we are free to reject the Creator who made us but not free to reject the government we created?

What if a government that rejects its own Constitution were to be rejected by the people? What if the people have had enough of politicians and government leaders who promise safety and demand the surrender of liberty? What if liberty once surrendered is never returned? What if the liberty-for-safety trade is a facade that impairs both liberty and safety?

What if that trade makes government's job easier, but does not keep us safer? What if the Constitution was written to keep the government's job from becoming too easy? What if it is easier to listen to everyone's phone calls than only to those as to whom the government has probable cause to listen? What if the Constitution recognizes that liberty is personal and cannot be sacrificed by a majority vote of representatives, but only by individual consent?

What if the greatest right protected by the Constitution is the right to be left alone, the right to be oneself, the right to answer only to one's own free will? What if the Framers who wrote the Constitution so valued the right to privacy that they wrote very specific criteria into the Constitution to govern the government's ability to interfere with it? What if the government violated those criteria millions of times a day in the name of safety?

What if the violation of the right to privacy is a gateway to all other government violations of personal liberty? What if every government witch hunt never stops until it finds or creates a witch? What if every government inquisition never stops until it finds or creates a heretic? What if government does create modern-day witches and heretics and then arrests them and seeks credit for keeping us safe from them? What if they never posed any threat? What if we fall for this?

What if those who love power defeat those who love liberty in a government election? What if there is no one left to enforce the Constitution against those in power?

What if all this is happening right under our noses? What do we do about it?


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
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To: Kaslin

If we didn’t have a Constitution we’d have a muslim president.


21 posted on 05/21/2015 12:05:55 PM PDT by DungeonMaster (Of those born of women there is not risen one greater than John The Baptist.)
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To: Kaslin; nathanbedford

A Constitution not followed is worse than no Constitution at all. This sad state of affairs breeds contempt for the government in the intelligent, and a sentimental belief in the phony protections it was supposed to have in the weak minded. As such the Constitution now provides a fig leaf for the naked aggression of the socialist statist agenda.


22 posted on 05/21/2015 12:06:39 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Kaslin
These days, the only thing the Constitution does is give 546 people job titles. Once they get those jobs, it seems to be "anything goes" from then on.

-PJ

23 posted on 05/21/2015 12:12:14 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: central_va
Well put.

As a society we are losing our culture, our faith, our self-confidence, our patriotism and we are wading into the swamps of cynicism. We have no Constitution, no sure and certain refuge for liberty and at best a week national spirit to exert ourselves to change course.

We can blame it on the rats in Congress, the Rinos, the radicals like Obama, K St. and Wall Street, but Pogo knows who the enemy is.


24 posted on 05/21/2015 12:20:51 PM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: Kaslin

What makes anyone think we still have The Constitution???


25 posted on 05/21/2015 12:30:02 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion ( "Forward lies the crown, and onward is the goal.")
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To: Kaslin
What if all this is happening right under our noses? What do we do about it?"

Call for a convention to establish a national governing document. The US Constitution was established with competing plans, presentation, compromise and ratification.


26 posted on 05/21/2015 12:45:44 PM PDT by SvenMagnussen (1983 ... the year Obama became a naturalized U.S. citizen)
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To: nathanbedford

Great Thought. It may be both though. A purposeful mission at the top and the resulting action is collapse from the bottom up.


27 posted on 05/21/2015 12:49:11 PM PDT by ilgipper
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To: SvenMagnussen
Repeal the 17th Amendment and all good things are possible.
28 posted on 05/21/2015 12:52:16 PM PDT by Jacquerie (To shun Article V is to embrace tyranny.)
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To: Jacquerie

An ineligible President voids the Constitution. The Supreme Court appointments made by an ineligible President are void. The entire Constitutional Republic has collapsed.

A new national governing document must be established.


29 posted on 05/21/2015 1:22:09 PM PDT by SvenMagnussen (1983 ... the year Obama became a naturalized U.S. citizen)
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To: central_va

+1


30 posted on 05/21/2015 2:50:20 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Know Islam, No Peace - No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: Kaslin

bump


31 posted on 05/21/2015 10:06:59 PM PDT by gattaca (Republicans believe every day is July 4, democrats believe every day is April 15. Ronald Reagan)
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To: nathanbedford

I remember hearing some one say “Top down, bottom up, inside out”. Beck was quoting Van Jones.


32 posted on 05/22/2015 3:52:42 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: wastoute
That's right I hadn't thought of the Van Jones' mantra except perhaps unconsciously until you reminded me.

We as a nation are conditioned to think of the Supreme Court as not only the protector of our liberties but as the aery dwelling place of our modern oracles but these black robed tyrants could not have their way unless the ground had already been well plowed and cultivated preparing the yeomanry to accept the next rewrite of the Constitution to come down from Olympus.

The classic case is the transformation of the popular attitude toward homosexuality and especially toward homosexual marriage. Whatever the true statistics, there can be no doubt that the country has moved to a far more tolerant attitude to which the Supreme Court will be out of sync if it does not support gay marriage. This result would've been unthinkable a decade or two ago.

So we are losing cases in the Supreme Court because we are losing in the law schools and before that we are losing in the Ivy League universities and before that we are losing in the secondary education system. We can apply the same step down analysis to our news, our Hollywood drama, our mores on Wall Street, our foreign policy concerning Islam and Israel etc.

Clearly conservatives are not competing effectively from the bottom up and until we do we will continue to lose and think it is because the elitists on top are stealing our liberties. They are of course but the people are not alarmed. Our institutions, preponderanly leftist, are funded by our government and they are busily conditioning the yeomanry at our expense with tax dollars and federal subsidies which go largely unremarked.


33 posted on 05/22/2015 4:42:23 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford

Oh, but we ARE winning! You mention the Gaystopo success in PR. Turns out to be as fraudulent as ALL libtard bovine scat. Like global warming just so much faked science. If I had faked half as much I would have flunked Organic Chemistry. No, we are winning and that is what is driving the Brown Shirt Media and the libturds into such a frenzy. They KNOW the truth they just can’t afford to acknowledge it. I have commented on my observation of the near extinction of white males on university campii. It is just common sense. Nothing to be gained there. While we bemoan what is happening in these environments the mountains the libtards have struggled for 100 years to dominate turn into molehills because of the loss of integrity these institutions once enjoyed is part and parcel to their efforts. While they dominate these once important institutions their abuse of these same institutions renders them irrelevant to rational people. We ARE winning because most folks are rational. Conservative values and principles are not just optional philosophies but like gravity, rules of nature. This fact is why He told Pilate, “I AM the Truth”.


34 posted on 05/22/2015 5:13:52 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: wastoute
I hope you are right and I am wrong.


35 posted on 05/22/2015 5:16:50 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford

8 words? I hope you get better soon.


36 posted on 05/22/2015 5:18:17 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: central_va
I'm in the pink but my alter ego, Dragon Naturally Speaking voice-recognition software is behaving poorly and putting me off my game.


37 posted on 05/22/2015 5:28:27 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford
Dragon Naturally Speaking voice-recognition software

You don't use that, do you?

38 posted on 05/22/2015 5:47:51 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: central_va
Guilty.


39 posted on 05/22/2015 5:54:02 AM PDT by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford
"They are of course but the people are not alarmed. Our institutions, preponderanly leftist, are funded by our government and they are busily conditioning the yeomanry at our expense with tax dollars and federal subsidies which go largely unremarked."

Spot on! Government involvement in education = indoctrination. Government will never teach the constitutionally enumerated limits to their power over the lives of the citizenry. Never.

40 posted on 05/22/2015 5:57:22 AM PDT by Comment Not Approved (When bureaucrats outlaw hunting, outlaws will hunt bureaucrats.)
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