If we don’t recover the Constitution and do it quickly, America will become just another lawless, third world banana republic. We are almost there already, IMHO.
This article deserves a ping to the Rev. War/ Founding Fathers ping list.
FReep mail me if you want on, or off, this (normally) little used ping list. I say normally because I’ve issued more pings this weekend than I have issued in the past year! There have been so many article that are pertinent.
Ping
Article V Convention of States is America’s only hope of regaining the Constitution’s promise of a Federal government with limited, enumerated powers and the Bill of Rights’ guarantees of freedom & self governance.
-PJ
We need a POTUS who is a scholar in the U.S. Constitution - TED CRUZ.
TED CRUZ - 2016
Doesn’t seem so-called conservatives are very interested in taking ownership of their Constitution. The ‘Friday Silliness Thread’ gets about 50x more replies.
You can restore the Constitution in one “simple” step: Restore hard money to the USA. Do away with the Federal Reserve and the massive debt it supports and creates.
Money is oxygen of progressives, socialists and statists. Imagine how government and society would change if we returned to a system where money was completely OUT of the control of politicians and their cronies?
It is clear no politicians anywhere care about doing anything about this. Weve been waiting for decades. Lotta lip service and kabuki.
This is why progressives HATE the Constitution.
The following excerpt from an essay about our Constitution and involvement in international politics helped me understand the document. The American Dream never meant government largess ensuring home values, college funds, retirement accounts, savings, executive severance packages, affordable healthcare, homeownership, lifetime employment, corporate wealth, political careers, and union benefits. This country is transforming into a Gulag of Dependency from the Arsenal of Democracy.
Finally with these and other precedents we come to the founding of our country. Now human rights get synthesized into property as defined most prominently by John Locke and James Madison. Individual property is first of all sourced internally in opinion, religion, communications, use of abilities to labor physically and mentally, and in conscience. Only by application of these inherent rights does one come to the external and more traditional definition involving those things which man was to have dominion over ever since the Creation. Therefore the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happinessâ€. Here we have the internal attributes of property on which all external manifestations depend.
By keeping faith with this broad definition of property our Founding Fathers came to the unique idea that “We the people of the United States†would establish a federal government. In the Convention they displayed an ability to compromise sourced in gracious self-abnegation rather than being dominated by the cynical haggling expected of fallen beings. The outcome was an extraordinarily perilous experiment placing primary faith in the natural rights of fallen individuals judiciously constrained by a limited government recognizing the paradox of its own fragility.
Constitution Society: John Locke CHAP. V Of Property.
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm
Property by James Madison
http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/property-by-james-madison-march-29-1792.html
You are correct in your view that the "necessary and proper" clause was the gateway to an expansive federal government. Chief Justice Marshall interpreted that clause very broadly in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Please notice that date - 1819. For almost 200 years, the federal government has been on a growth trajectory because of Marshall's interpretation and because other branches of our government have accepted that interpretation.
My point- if a large federal government is the problem, then the theory supporting a large federal government was born almost 200 years ago. It is not going to be easy to reverse 200 years of Constitutional history without amending the Constitution.
“I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government....At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
— Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
“The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
— Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
— Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
The Fact is that We should have never lost it in the first place- Americans do not have what it takes to defend the constitution anymore
The actual problem is that we no longer have a constitutional republic. Our government has already deteriorated into an oligarchy. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page of Princeton have documented it in their 2014 study: “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizensâ€.
There have been 3 key corruptions of the Constitution that gave rise to the current oligarchy:
1. 16th Amendment allowing for federal taxation of income, making serfs of us all.
2. 17th Amendment taking the election of Federal Senators away from the States and changing it to general election, thereby emasculating the States.
3. House rule limiting House membership to 435 in 1928, which has eroded the influence of the citizenry over the House. The Constitution proscribed a maximum of 1 Representative for every 30,000 citizens, it has now waned to 1 for every 710,000 citizens making it nearly impossible for a true citizen statesman or woman to attain the office.
Until these 3 corruptions are reversed, the U.S. government will remain an oligarchy.
No matter what we do in “recovering the Constitution”, UNESCO, the UN and every State Dept of Education have already accomplished an end run. Even if we get rid of the Federal department, it has all been transmitted to each State, and in turn every school district in America. Game....Set........MATCH. It will take the power of the Almighty to right this “ship of state” without bloodshed. The only way Patriots will be able to do so is with lead and blood. Pray...humble yourself and pray for deliverance from personal sin and National. It is the only sure way for the “bloodless coup” that is needed.
THE CONSTITUTION
And when patriots cannot find a clause to justify an action of the federal government then the feds have probably overreached their constitutionally limited powers with the action.
In fact, to save yourselves some work, note that one of the only powers that the states have delegated to the feds to regulate something inside a state is the US Mail Service (1.8.7). In other words, nearly all other federal governnment services that many citizens are now so dependent on are unconstitutional imo.
Note that not only is everything that the EPA does, for example, unconstitutional imo, but the EPAs very existance is unconstitutional.
Also note that unconstitutional federal government social spending programs are based on 10th Amendment-protected state powers and associated state revenues which the corrupt feds have stolen from the states. Congress wrongly steals state revenues by means of unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes which Congress cannot justify under its Section 8-limited powers.
”Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” - Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
There does not appear to be any hint of this article at the link.
Why does this article link to self.com?
bkmk