Posted on 03/28/2009 8:31:50 AM PDT by Loud Mime
Reasons for the Bill Of Rights reference bump! ;-)
ping
It is clear to all but those willing to compromise their freedom that our Constitution and way of life are under direct attack from within.
We now have a president who is eminently impeachable for violating his oath of office.
It is rapidly growing too late to save our nation. This has been many years coming. We are in the last deays of the republic.
Tyranny is at our doorstep. 2010 will be too late. We must, if we are to save our once great nation, mobilize now.
That’s a good video, but I have some disagreements with some of its content. Thanks, it was a good study.
Who said anything about “without a republic?”
Some quotations regarding the size of a republic...and mind you, this was all brought up in reference to the original 13 colonies...
Whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent, and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interest, morals, and policies, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity, for to these objects it must be directed: this unkindred legislature therefore, composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their nature, will in its exercise, emphatically be, like a house divided against itself.
Anti-federalist papers, Cato #3
It is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist. In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own; he soon begins to think that he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of less extent, and of course are less protected.
Montesquieu —as quoted by Brutus and Cato, Anti-federalist papers.
It’s funny that conservative all laud the Federalist Papers, and almost never mention the Anti-Federalists. The Founders understood that what they were undertaking was an experiment, not a fixed and known perfect solution. The truth is, much of the warnings of the anti-federalists turned out to be correct. We’d be wise to pay as much attention to them as we do to the Federalists, who on many scores were well-intentioned, but completely wrong, as time has shown. (See the debates regarding “general welfare”, “necessary and proper”, the power of the judiciary, etc)
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.
An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known, and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very hall of government itself.
For the traitor appears no traitor.
He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in hearts of men.He rots the soul of a nation.
He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city. He infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.
-CICERO
First there is the concept that there are individual retained rights over which power to regulate has not been delegated to government.
10th Amendment - “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
Then there is the concept of actional trespass as force or violence with consequence of injury to liberty, security, property and relative equality of rights. There is the maxim of law regarding property: “sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas” - - each one must so use his own as not to injure his neighbor- This means the individual has liberty bounded only by the equal rights of others.
Then there is the limitation of government regulation
to the protection of the public from substantial injury to the general public health, safety, morals and “welfare”. With the distinction that regulation to advance the “public welfare” is constrained by Fifth Amendment limitations and just compensation for the taking of private property to advance the legitimate public good.
Regulation for anything else such as community concensus, promotion of a popular behavior, lifestyle choice or belief is an encroachment upon individual freedom.
Then there is the heritage of the “rights of Englishmen” at the foundation of our inherited legal tradition and carried forward through the principles of stare decisis. (Vote, jury trial, etc.)
The founders intentionally created a Republic and not a democracy to weaken the tyranny of the majority over the individual. Then they separated powers among three seperate branches of government. They also set up a system of federal “dual soverignty” with a State and a National government, where the national did not have power over the State - each having seperate powers to regulate individual action. They also delegated the national distinct enumerated authorities, carving it from the original powers of the States.
All of this fractured power was to protect the individual and maximize individual freedom/liberty. In contrast, the French felt that the individual surrendered his natural rights for superior civil rights and was subject to the rule of the majority.
Since its creation, the tendancy has been to move from what we were given to a more “democratic,” hierarchial and regulatory America to the sacrifice of individual liberty.
Some learned comments on the contents of this site, please, gentlemen and ladies.
And neither be put off by the link or the first two pages, thank you.
GREAT video! bttt
bookmark
I heard that Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California will be given to China to pay portion of the U.S. debt. Maybe that will make some people happy!
This is precisely why our founders rejected the idea of a democracy out of hand (They called it mob rule) a chose a republican form of government instead.
Someone needs to let the news readers on TV in on this fact.
Bump for later!
I am familiar with the AF Papers; I must say that although they have their points, I disagree with their total argument. I find the FP’s more convincing.
Remember, the government of today is not the one designed by our founders. The forces of populism have overtaken the ethics that should serve as our guide. People are now voting themselves riches out of the treasury. That was not in the FP’s, nor in the Constitution.
You can say that again! The mercantile republic that is the current, rapidly failing, United States is NOT AT ALL akin to the South Atlantic republicanism laid out by the founders.
“Madison defended that by explaining that the Senate represented the State governments, something that the Seventeenth Amendment changed.” And so too, the 17th A indelicately and gradually and unfortunately has undermined the originalists brand of federalism. By-passing states’ interests and state compacts has lead us to a dangerous populism, ie a mob democracy, whereby both chambers are controlled by vox populi sentiments which historically leads to mob rule.
Forgive my posting such obvious items; you never know who else is reading this stuff, so I reduce the writing down the the LCD, like our schools do.
;^)
For some time I have believed that the only way the government can cure its debt is to sell property.....lots of it. How else can they do it?
If I were buying, I’d want the channel islands in California first; then the coastlines around Vandenberg AFB.
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