That said, you have to focus on the exporting, too. Early farmers like Art Vandelay, whose great great great grandson went on to become a judge, came to realize this.
Posted on 07/03/2023 8:48:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Before you begin wondering if my account was hacked by activists from the Southern Poverty Law Center, allow me to assure you that wasn’t the case. The title is a reference to a recent op-ed from Frank Miele at RealClearPolitics titled, “We Need a Constitution That Means What it Says.” Rather than arguing that the Founding Document was poorly written or that its authors somehow got it wrong, Frank is pointing out that the Supreme Court has taken to ignoring the actual words that were written. Despite receiving many accolades from Constitutional conservatives following recent decisions, some of the rulings we’ve seen were handed down were based on a very revisionist interpretation of the Constitution rather than an originalist one. As a prime example, he points to Moore v. Harper, where the court rejected the so-called “independent state legislature” theory when setting election laws. But as Frank points out, that’s not “a theory.” It’s the literal wording of the Constitution.
The mainstream media (and of course their Democratic Party allies) celebrated the court’s decision in Moore v. Harper that rejected the so-called “independent state legislature” theory. The New York Times called the theory “dangerous.” Vox said the ruling was a “big victory for democracy.” Those who supported the independent state legislature “theory” were called extreme, fringe, radical, and worse. In other words, they were Trump supporters.
The only problem is that if the theory is extreme, then so is the U.S. Constitution, because no matter how much the 6-3 majority insists otherwise, it isn’t a theory at all. It is the plain language of the Constitution. Check it out for yourself.
Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution says specifically, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”
The author goes on to note another recent decision regarding the appointment of presidential electors. That’s another case where the Constitution specifically assigns the responsibility for how that process is handled to the legislatures of the states. But it hasn’t actually worked out that way in the modern era.
In reality, the U.S. Constitution has, over the years, been abused more badly than an underage cartel drug mule. And some trends have taken place over such a long period of time that people seem to simply accept them. Take, for example, the rampant abuse of the Interstate Commerce Clause, which has been going on for centuries and has been used to swell the powers of the federal government vastly at the expense of the states.
A careful search of the full federal legal code will find the Commerce Clause referenced in more laws than you can count. That’s because Congress passes a lot of laws that they should have no business passing. Yet if they can point to any instance where money changes hands, they invoke the Commerce Clause. But the Founders wrote that clause envisioning a collection of powerful and occasionally competing states. That’s not how the country evolved, unfortunately. And yet the courts allow Congress to get away with this trick over and over again.
With all that in mind, I would quibble a bit with the wording Frank Miele chose regarding a Consitution that “means what it says.” The document means what the Founders meant when they wrote it. The words remain the same today, but they are being interpreted in different ways that favor more centralized power and less control by the states. Unfortunately, none of the authors have survived to stand and defend themselves in the 21st century. And the people making the final call today see things differently.
The real problem is NOT THE CONSTITUTION, but Marxists who want to repeal the Constitution!
The only hope .. short of CW.. is a amicable? separation ..by states.. from the federal government. Stop taking federal money except where it is Constitutionally mandated. And get the Fed out!
Deep State couldn’t find a way to repeal the Constitution.
So it ended the republic.
Problem solved.
Remind me of the problem with Dred Scott.
The Founders did assume a literate and well-meaning population.
And we need one that has teeth.
Our Constitution does not appear to have any teeth.
Corrupt politicians/government agents do whatever they want to do, and face no consequences.
My point was that before mass production and modern technology, transportation, and the preservation of perishables, problems like tainted meat, infected vegetables, defective vehicals, monopolistic transport, would be minor and local. There would be much less need for the federal government to play a role in interstate commerce because there would be so much less commerce and problems would be truly local. You can’t have the economy we have now and use the technology we use today and expect the federal government to be as uninvolved in commerce as it was in Jefferson’s day.
Clearly, there was interstate commerce then, or there would be no need for an interstate commerce clause, but the problem was still thought of in terms of tariffs and duties. They didn’t expect that the kind of regulation and oversight that we have now would be necessary. Today it is, and expecting every state to do its own safety regulation (or not) would introduce the kind of bottlenecks there were in the Holy Roman Empire. That doesn’t mean that everything we do is part of interstate commerce. It does mean that we were bound to have a bureaucracy larger than Jefferson’s. Maybe this was an obvious point, but I thought it needed to be made.
The constitution is fine. The problem is Washington DC the executive branch, the congressional branch, and the Supreme Court branch. They all refuse to follow the constitution. Now here we are.
That said, you have to focus on the exporting, too. Early farmers like Art Vandelay, whose great great great grandson went on to become a judge, came to realize this.
They also envisioned a moral and religious people
The Constitution isn’t flawed by any means it’s why the Bolshevik democrat party wants to eliminate it.
They have never stopped trying to change the wording or it’s meaning the founders knew what life under tyranny was like and created a life of liberty to live under.
Actually, I do. The Constigution does not grant to Congress or the executive the kind of police power that you argue is necessary. Commerce is the same today as it was 250 years ago. The commercial code, financing and commercial transaction structures are the same. Claims for defective products or adulterated food proceed under a federal system predictably. International transactions proceed just fine without an overarching international police power. Which undercuts the basic thrust of your argument.
The drafters of the Constitution had the experience of an overly concentrated power regulating trade called the Crown. So our federal system was designed with basicly no police power because if you give an inch, they take a yard. The AAA in the 30's was nothing more than police power operating under the commerce clause. After 80 years, the federal government can now force an individual to enter into an unwanted contract. See NFIB v. Sebelius.
This is not because large, complex, voluminous or dangerous commercial transactions require a federal police power. It is because Washingtion will forever seek to expand its power because large, incumbent interests benefit from it. There should be only enough federal power to prevent individual states from taxing (internal tariffs) interstate commerce to the detriment of commercial transactions generally and nothing more. Instead we have a federal government that can do whatever it wants, literally. I detest it.
Washington DC didn’t take that power on its own. It didn’t even get it from powerful interests acting on their own. The voters wanted various protections, or what they thought were protections, and they didn’t think the Founders would have opposed federal product safety regulation of interstate commerce.
The voters had nothing to do with it, which is the point you are missing entirely. The Surpeme Court buckled under political pressure from Roosevelt, who sought to pack the Court. The Supreme Court delivered Wickard and several related decisions, which turned commerce power into police power. Thereafter, the decision matrix for the voters was whether a particular excercise of federal police power to regulate commerce was desirable or not. Federal police power was successfully annexed. This happened 100% in Washington DC and the voters were kept complely outside of the decision making process. Congress sat on the sidelines. The Supreme Court executed a coup d'etat limited to the scope of commerce power because they were threatened with packing and were so enamored with 1934 Soviet Russia ans Nazi Germany.
The Interstate Commerce Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and other federal regulatory laws were in place before that.
Interstate Commerce Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act represent the eccercise of commerce power that are miniscule in comparison to what happened in the 30’s. I disagree that both are proper exercises of commerce power (I also include the child labor cases as not within what commerce power should allow). I am no fan federal power expansion allowed under the cult of Teddy Roosevelt. Regardless, you are missing the point - commerce power, a specific and enumerated power, is not police power, which a Court can interpret expensively, no matter how much the “woke” want expansive commerce power.
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