Posted on 07/09/2009 4:38:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- A few weeks back, at the dawn of the Obama administration, I was at dinner with a very bright woman of middle years who calls herself an independent. She found the new president very engaging, but she was alarmed by the music in the air: a government takeover of Detroit, a $700 billion government bailout of the banks, a $787 billion stimulus bill, a cap and trade bill that would add perhaps $800-$2,000 to every family's tax bill, and a massive health care reform now estimated to cost $1 trillion over the next decade. For the past 30 years, most of them good economic years, the federal bite into our gross domestic product has been just less than 20 percent. Calculating the cost of Obama's spending, it could be 28.1 percent this fiscal year, a peacetime record!
My dinner companion was alarmed. She was not simply alarmed by the bills our president and his Democratic colleagues were ringing up on the Hill. My friend, the independent, was alarmed by something much more important: the cost to our freedoms. As I believe she put it, "The question here is our liberty." Increasingly, thoughtful Americans understand the Obama era in these terms. With the government suddenly looming so large in the life of every American, it is time for us to consider what is a singularly American possession: individual liberty. The Founding Fathers created a government that was uniquely solicitous about individual liberty. With the federal government so deeply involved in our health care, our banking, our manufacturing and the many targets of its $787 billion stimulus program, it is time to think about your liberty vis-a-vis the government bureaucrats who are about to minister to you.
Ronald Reagan's modern conservative movement began thinking about the loss of individual liberty to government encroachment a half-century ago, thanks in part to the wake-up call from Friedrich Hayek, delivered in his indispensable book "The Road to Serfdom." Hayek believed government is a threat to freedom, enterprise and the rule of law. Later, another vigilant advocate of personal liberty, Frank Meyer, came along and became a major figure for American conservatives, propounding the exhilarating argument that freedom is essential to mankind. Freedom, he wrote, is the "essence of (man's) being," for without it, a citizen cannot be moral, by which he meant cannot choose good over evil. Meyer believed freedom is at our essence because God put it there. God gave us freedom to choose -- good over evil, art over schlock, a knee replacement over a Botox treatment.
Personal liberty makes each American citizen a creature of dignity. Obama overlooks this. Though in presenting Congress a $3.9 trillion budget Feb. 24 he insisted that he's not for big government, he is. Consider the vastness of the budget, its far-reaching domestic policies, and much of his background as a community organizer. Clearly, he is a big-government guy. No other American president has been so committed to big government.
Historically, most of our experiences with big government have been unhappy. Big government is expensive, inefficient and, once corrupted, very difficult to clean up. Moreover, once a government bureaucracy has made its judgment on you, whom do you appeal to? With Obamacare, government will decide when and whether you can get that knee replacement. From the clear utterances of the president's health care advisers, namely, Ezekiel Emanuel and David Blumenthal, that knee replacement will depend on such factors as your age and your overall health. If you are too old or decrepit, government will have a more economical place to spend its money. In other words, your health will not be decided by what you want to pay for it, but by government policy. That test you wanted for colon cancer might be denied. You might just be too old. Such decisions are made by the nationalized British system all the time.
Almost any service the government provides can be more efficiently and effectively provided by private enterprise. The most striking example is the inefficiency of the money-losing U.S. Postal Service, which has been swept aside by the Internet and by such private carriers as UPS and FedEx. Government is not even very effective in its efforts at regulation. Consider the recent failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There is another unappreciated failing of government. It politicizes everything that it touches, including the simplest human relations. Agreements that ought to be arrived at voluntarily or through the rule of law are arrived at by lobbyists or thanks to the political power of your group -- ethnic, economic or otherwise.
One of the little-noted projects of the government health care reforms being considered on Capitol Hill today is the channeling of health care money away from the elderly and toward community services and drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Equal rights before the law is all well and good, but it is political favor and political power that matter when big government is making your decisions for you.
That is why so many Americans have opted for freedom from government. We recognize that the free society is the most humane ... and the most productive.
I like RET, but he's wrong about this. Governments are all, without exception, jealous of and destructive of, individual liberty.
It was the People, from whom the Founders came, that were uniquely solicitous of individual liberty. That's why, when they created the 1788 Constitution, they limited the scope and powers of the government - because they knew that the government of their creation would NOT be "uniquely solicitous" about individual liberty.
Post Office
Social Security
Medicaid
VA
\Just try to go into a SS office and get help. The government employees could care less about helping you, they are downright rude and lazy.
Every American should be paying attention to this takeover of our liberties.
This is a little discussed aspect of the federal government.
Congress began assigning its legislative duties to political central planners in earnest during FDR. It is clearly unconstitutional as Art 1 Sec 1 grants all legislative power to Congress. It is as if you granted a power of attorney to someone and without your permission, they gave or sold it to another.
The only way to restore our liberties is to return to the vision of our Founders as expressed in the Declaration and Constitution. It ain't gonna happen.
When my liberal brother touts how much he wants a government run health care system, I remind him that the goverment DOES run a health care system, they run the VA hospitals. That always shuts him up-at least for a little while until I have to remind him again.
I've done a great deal of thinking about that remark since then. If you look at all of the laws on the books in America; from legislative bodies to regulatory agencies and the like, America has not been the land of the free for generations. If ALL of the laws and regulations could truly be enforced, we would be the most oppressed society on earth. Just as a case in point, look at all the stupid laws Congress passes on top of existing laws to do the same thing - NONE of which is really enforceable. For example, there are in excess of 20,000 gun laws currently on the books, yet Congress, state legislatures and city councils are all eager and anxious to add more and for all of these gun laws, NONE of them will stop the next gun crime.
We have a problem that stems from legislative bodies (to include Congress) that lacks enough real work to do for the people to justify being in session either all year or most of the year. Congress is the most egregious example, but they all create a lot of “make-work” laws to make it appear that they are doing things “for the people”.
Frankly, in addition to strict term limits, I would like to see ALL legislative sessions limited to no more than 6 months once every 2 years. After that, they go home and resume their normal job. Politics shouldn't be a career. If they are needed back in session for some emergency, the president or governor can call them back into special session. It isn't that difficult and would resolve a LOT of the problems we have today with out-of-control legislators and legislative bodies.
When you are left with no meaningful choices and/or the government strips away the consequences of your actions, both good and bad, you have been completely stripped of all your freedom - in truth your very humanity. You become a slave who is simply required to perform your function for the greater good.
Too many people, including many on the right fail to understand that. They want to outlaw this and that slowly chipping away our hard earned freedoms until nothing is left. Basically the tyranny of the majority. Our constitution was unique because it defined the basic rights of individuals above the desires of the majority and the powerful. Today the majority and the powerful can pretty much take whatever they like - all in the name of the greater good. We have lost much.
Congress and the State Legislatures are not interested in stopping gun crime.
This is a lie foisted upon the people, or what used to be called the citizenry before the majority of voters that voted said, via their votes, that they would prefer to be sujects.
Their actual desire and goal is to take guns away from lawabiding individuals. They want to do this so that they can have full and total control of them.
If you want a new law you have to get rid of an old law.
If the new law is so important it would be worth it, wouldn't it?
The founding fathers never envisioned a professional political class. A political class that gains in wealth and power through creating more laws that bit by bit give them control of everything. Where the ordinary citizen has to come begging for permission before their masters to do this or that.
I wonder how many seniors conditioned to pull the "D" lever are aware of that?
The Democrats campaign by telling them that if they vote Republican, everything they have will be taken away from them, when the reality is the exact opposite. When Democrats warn people of what will happen if Republicans are elected, it's because that's what Democrats are eager to do.
I'd like to see this too, but see changes such as that in the current climate as too dangerous. The natural bent of the current admin is marxist, fascist, czarist, and dictatorshipist. They see just about any "change" more as opportunity. So, we're faced with a catch-22 - make needed changes in the short term, and lose everything. Or wait, till a better and more relaxed climate can be reached (eg, with at least the house in Repub control), when the clamor to fix things may be substantially quieter.
The assault on liberty is most evident when Congress passes (unread)a 1500 page bill. What legislation requires 1500 pages except a bill that seeks to micromanage every aspect of our lives? Those 1500 pages will translate into tens of thousands of pages of government regulations that will further erode our liberty and turn basic decisions in our personal lives over to faceless bureaucrats.
Now, there's an idea that captured the minds and hearts of millions and millions of oppressed individuals living in even the most remote areas of the world for over 200 years, and they came to America to find it!
Why? Well, Bartholdi captured the idea in his lovely and inviting statue honoring America's first 100 years, the Chinese students understood it when they erected a replica of that symbol in Tiananmen Square, and the Iranians understand it when they seek to assert the idea in their own country.
Only in America, it seems, have we censored the idea out of our textbooks and out of our places of public dialogue. Liberty is the natural longing of the heart, and it was in America that there were once assembled a group of unique individuals who understood it and incorporated its ideas into a single document which declared its principles to the world.
When, in 1787, they structured their Constitution, it limited government and freed individuals and was amendable only by "its keepers"--"We, the People."
On another thread today, I posted Congressman Davy Crockett's speech to Congress on the limited powers the people had allowed to the government to take their earnings and transfer them to others, no matter how worthy the recipient. How far we have come from the Founders' intended protections for liberty! Here are Crockett's words to his fellow Congressmen:
"David Crockett
(Congressman 1827-31,1833-35)
"One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:
"'Mr. Speaker - I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.
"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.
Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:
"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made houseless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon as it could be done.
"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road, I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.
"I began: 'Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and - '
"'Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I shall not vote for you again''
“This was a sockdolager .. I begged him to tell me what was the matter.
"'Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest....But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.'
" 'I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional question'
,,'No, Colonel, there is no mistake. Though I live here in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?'
"'Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.’
"'It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in this country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000.00. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life. The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports to be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.
"'So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.''
"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition, and this man should go to talking, he would set others to talking, and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and the fact is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to him-
“Well, my, friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what you have said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot'
"He laughingly replied- 'Yes, Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgement of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around the district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that way.'
“If I don’t,' said I, 'I wish I may be shot; and to convince you that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for it ''
"'No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, some and to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you'
"'Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-by. I must know your name'
"'My name is Bunce.'
"'Not Horatio Bunce?'
“'Yes,
"'Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad to have met you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.’
"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him before, I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.
"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.
"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life before. I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him - no, that is not the word - I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year; and I will tell you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.
"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted - at least, they all knew me.
"In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by saying-
" 'Fellow-citizens - I present myself before you today feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which ignorance or prejudice, or both, have heretofore hidden from my view. I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That I should make this acknowledgement is due to myself as well as to you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only.'
"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying-
"'And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error.
"'It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled to the credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you so.'
"He came upon the stand and said:
" 'Fellow citizens - It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully perform all that he has promised you today.'
"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.
“'I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the honors I have received and all the reputation I have ever made, or ever shall make, as a member of Congress.
"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday.
"There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men - men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased -a debt which could not be paid by money - and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice, to obtain it."
Reprinted and excerpted from a book entitled, ”Our Ageless Constitution,” Part VIII, “The Ideas Of Liberty,” published by W. David Stedman Associates, 1987 (Bicentennial Edition), with permission of Foundation for Economic Education’s brochure entitled, “Not Yours To Give”).
I would like to see MY changes implemented right after we DUMP the current regime. You’re right, though, we’d only be hosing ourselves to try to get it done while they’re in power.
Conceptually, I agree with you. However, 1,000 laws suggests the limitations on a given level, such as the federal level. So would you allow an additional 1,000 laws for the state level and another 1,000 laws for the local level??
I'm not sure I fully grasp what you are suggesting.
I’d make the limit inversely proportional to the entities jurisdiction.
The larger the the jurisdiction the lower the number of laws allowed. That makes the law local for the most part...
Just an idea... Not really thought out...
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