Posted on 07/03/2023 8:48:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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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