Posted on 01/19/2005 9:54:17 AM PST by Conservative Coulter Fan
Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution limits the Federal Government to twenty Enumerated Powers or “areas.” None of these powers include the Federal Government taking responsibility for the retirement of citizens, getting into the business of retirement, especially by taking money from Americans against their will and forcing them into a government run system that operates like an illegal pyramid scheme.
Some defenders of Social Security contend that the General Welfare Clause in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, “…to promote the general welfare,” is in fact clear evidence of the constitutionality of Social Security. While this view is widespread, to say the least, James Madison in Federalist Papers Forty-One & Forty-Two clearly rebuffed such a contention explaining the General Welfare Clause was just a summary of the twenty Enumerated Powers rather than a blanket power as critics of the Constitution, at the time, had argued.
Its worth noting that defenders of Social Security are basing the constitutionality of the largest program in existence on what Madison called a “misconstruction” used by critics who attacked the Constitution. Madison explained, “For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural or more common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify by an enumeration of the particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity ... what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions and disregarding the specifications which limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the general welfare?”
So if Social Security is unconstitutional, hence illegal, why shouldn’t the debate over “reform” center on this grave matter? Shouldn’t it be abolished if indeed the Federal Government has no legal authority to operate such a program?
SCOTUS has no power to legislate from the bench, which it did in Roe v. Wade. I would recommend you read the ruling, which stretched the Fifth Amendment protections and the Fourteenth Amendment into a “right to privacy,” thus, argued that there is also a “right to abortion.” It doesn’t take an “expert” on constitutional law to understand that there is in fact no right and if anything the matter would have delineated to the states of which 46 had outlawed it and 4 had laws restricting it. If you want to make abortion legal or a constitutional right, there is a way to go about it and that is amending the Constitution, which takes three-fourths of the states and two-thirds of Congress. Perhaps you would rather have unelected justices on the court hand down decrees and subvert the legislature as well as the will of the people, hence, what Patrick Buchanan called the “Judicial Dictatorship.”
Why didn't we have a constitutional amendment making abortion a right in 1973, but instead a judicial fiat and you're telling us that you support the judicial fiat of 1973 (Roe v. Wade), that you would uphold the fiat as a judge, and that for us opposed to abortion or the fiat: we must amend the Constitution. Why must we amend to undo the judicial activism when the burden to pass such an amendment should have fallen on those that support abortion?
The problem is that you do support an "activist judiciary" as this thread proves. I can quote Madison all day long on the General Welfare, which wasn't a power...just a summary of the 20 enumerated specifics, however, SCOTUS in all the glory of judicial activism ruled that Social Security was in fact Constitutional using the General Welfare Clause..."to promote the general welfare."
For right now I plan to exercise my right to speak out against such a horrible abuse of power, protest the government forcibly taking money from citizens, and forcing them into a program that operates like an illegal pyramid scheme. I hope to rally my fellow citizens...
Then let supporters of Social Security amend the Constitution! That's the way it should be done. I'll oppose Social security on other grounds, of course, but an amendment would deprive me of any objections on constitutional grounds.
I bet you would have been one of those individuals that thought the American patriots fighting for independence from Great Britain were “farmers with pitchforks” that didn’t stand a chance against the greatest military power on the face of the earth at the time.
I’ve done the exact same thing. Direct Taxation, taking people’s money against their will, (non-voluntary) in effect constitutes involuntary servitude. It is a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.
That's why people like the editor of World Net Daily, Joseph Farah, who I greatly respect, have refused to be called "conservative" simply because they feel that conservative has just become just another way of saying "statist."
I don't know if I always respect WorldNetDaily, but Farah has definitely written some nice essays.
FA Hayek, advocate of individual liberty and critic of socialism has his own essay "Why I am not a Conservative," you may be familiar with it.
Thanks for the informative Madison quotes (ignored by many of the posters on this thread).
Just to keep my hand in the thread till I have time to get back to the discussion, I thought I'd drop this into the mix. It is from a question/answer session following a speech, On Interpreting The Constitution, Justice Scalia delivered in 1997 before The Manhattan Institute For Policy Research. If you have time, take a look. Try to decide whether or not he was making a joke. Plenty in there to agitate both liberals and conservatives.
MALE VOICE: No, I'm talking about the power; the legitimacy of the Federal Government to undertake actions to say control how your children are raised.
I would suggest the Federal Government does not have that power because that power is not enumerated in The Constitution. And that's why the framers (talking away from microphone)
JUSTICE SCALIA: Okay. I mean, yes. I mean, another reason why some things can't be done by the Federal Government is that there is no proper Federal power.
But I suppose the Federal Government could fund, under its power; its welfare power, could fund Federal schools. And prescribe the programs for Federal schools. And then say you must go to Federal schools.
Put simply, much if not all of Art. I, 8 (including portions of the Commerce Clause itself) would be surplusage if Congress had been given authority over matters that substantially affect interstate commerce. An interpretation of cl. 3 that makes the rest of 8 superfluous simply cannot be correct. Yet this Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence has endorsed just such an interpretation: the power we have accorded Congress has swallowed Art. I, 8.
Indeed, if a substantial effects test can be appended to the Commerce Clause, why not to every other power of the Federal Government. There is no reason for singling out the Commerce Clause for special treatment.
Accordingly, Congress could regulate all matters that substantially affect the Army and Navy, bankruptcies, tax collection, expenditures, and so on. In that case, the clauses of 8 all mutually overlap, something we can assume the Founding Fathers never intended.
Our construction of the scope of congressional authority has the additional problem of coming close to turning the Tenth Amendment on its head. Our case law could be read to reserve to the United States all powers not expressly prohibited by the Constitution. Taken together, these fundamental textual problems should, at the very least, convince us that the substantial effects test should be reexamined.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas
"The Road to Serfdom," arguing Fascism is a socialist creature (which it is). Yes, I'm aware of Hayek.
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