Posted on 07/26/2010 10:53:36 AM PDT by DelaWhere
Throughout the 111th Congress, constituents have pressed Representatives and Senators for an explanation of where the Constitution grants them authority to pass legislation such as cap and trade and the Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul bill. Instead of listening to the people, Members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi (D-CA), glibly dismiss these requests with comments like, "[a]re you serious?"
Well, thanks to the outcry from patriots at town hall meetings across the country, liberals are finally paying attention to these questions.
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Throughout the 111th Congress, constituents have pressed Representatives and Senators for an explanation of where the Constitution grants them authority to pass legislation such as cap and trade and the Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul bill. Instead of listening to the people, Members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi (D-CA), glibly dismiss these requests with comments like, "[a]re you serious?"
Well, thanks to the outcry from patriots at town hall meetings across the country, liberals are finally paying attention to these questions. In fact, the left-wing Constitutional Accountability Center ("CAC") recently released an "issue brief" arguing for broad federal government powers to meddle in our economy and our lives. This Soros-funded group makes a number of dubious claims and takes several cheap shots, including a few aimed at Liberty Central! We are honored that we were noticed and happy to engage in this debate!
Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly of CAC's report, which is entitled "Setting the Record Straight: The Tea Party and the Constitutional Powers of the Federal Government."
GOOD: The good news is that at least some liberals are finally engaging the Tea Party's debate about the size and scope of the federal government generally. During the debate on the legislation, a number of Democrats dismissed the concerns of many patriots about the appropriate role of government. You may remember when Illinois Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) told a town hall meeting, "I don't worry about the Constitution." Or when Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) said to a caller on a radio show that "[t]he Constitution did not cover everything." Tea Party activists and other citizens responded by insisting that Congress consider first principles, including the concept of limited, enumerated powers. In fact, the report opens by begrudgingly acknowledging, "[t]he emergence of the Tea Party movement as an increasingly persistent presence in the media and in politics has focused national attention on the Constitution, as Tea Party members invoke our Nation's Founding in their rhetoric and claim to root their agenda in the Constitution."
The CAC's report is proof that grassroots activists have fundamentally changed the public conversation, forcing liberals to defend their schemes ... on Constitutional grounds!
BAD: The bad news, though we hesitate to call it news because it's not at all surprising, is that the CAC makes numerous claims of sweeping powers for the federal government, but then refuses to look to the text or history of the Constitution to back them up.! In the process, they distort the claims made by conservatives, setting up one straw man after another before declaring a liberal triumph.
The second half of the CAC's 6 page report makes highly suspect historical claims. It reviews various amendments passed following the Civil War, arguing that these gave Congress "all the tools it needs to address national problems," without clearly explaining why.
* Does the 24th Amendment banning poll taxes make the TARP bailout an acceptable delegation of congressional power? * How does the 26th Amendment's guarantee of the right to vote for 18 year-olds legitimate a government take-over of the energy sector through cap-and-trade?
The article does not answer these questions, merely asserting that collectively all these amendments augment the 1787 powers to ensure that the federal government "is strong enough to act when the national interest requires a national solution."
Only the left argues seriously that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, or George Washington ever thought the federal government had the power to mandate, regulate, subsidize, bail out, or bureaucratize anything it wanted without any practical limits.
UGLY: Unfortunately, the CAC issue brief pairs these bad arguments with a number of gratuitous attacks and wild exaggerations that would fit better in a wild-eyed rant by an MSNBC host than a policy paper. These specious claims about the Tea Party movement have no place in an intellectually serious analysis, but apparently CAC has decided to trade respectability for demagoguery.
These left-wing wonks charge "the Tea Party" with "talk of armed rebellion." Such gross distortion and misrepresentation has no place in serious conversations about national policy, but it plays well among liberal elites (e.g. the "Ruling Class") who believe that Tea Parties (the "Country Class") are the same folks who, in President Obama's words, "cling to guns and religion."
CONCLUSION: The CAC's report talks a lot about federal power that is "vast," "robust," "expanded," "significant," " sweeping," "strong," and "broad and substantial." In fact, the brief uses the word "power" or "powers" 33 times in six pages, almost always preceded by one of these adjectives. Missing from the document entirely? Any reference to truly foundational concepts like freedom, liberty, and individual, God-given rights or natural rights. Standing in stark contrast to the CAC assertion of nearly infinite federal authority is the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, who said, "The powers delegated...to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which...remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. Our system of government gives the federal government power to protect rights while placing limits on the government, to ensure that it does not infringe on fundamental individual rights.
Fundamentally, the Constitutional Accountability Center report gets it all wrong because it operates in the wrong direction. It starts with the progressives' desired conclusions about a gargantuan federal government, and then works back through history attempting to justify these "vast" and "sweeping" federal powers.
Read "Debunking the Constitutional Accountability Center" here at libertycentral.org!
We at Liberty Central take a different approach. We start with our nation's first principles, such as the statement in the Declaration of Independence proclaiming that governments are instituted "to secure these rights" of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Only when our federal government focuses on these first principles can we ensure that we pass on the blessings of liberty to our posterity.
God Bless this Nation and its heritage,
The Liberty Central Team
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