Posted on 09/20/2009 7:14:48 AM PDT by cc2k
<snip>
Mac thought again. “There are six things that I’d say are sure signs that we’re in trouble.
“First there’s the steady erosion of our basic rights, the ones a lot of people call our constitutional rights, though that’s not a good name for them. It’s better to think of them as natural rights, the way our Founding Fathers did—or think of them as God-given rights if you want. Thinking of them as constitutional rights is part of what is getting us in trouble. You have to realize that our Founding Fathers didn’t think of them as constitutional rights because they knew that if our rights are provided by either the Constitution or the government, what the government gives, it can also take away. As natural or God-given rights, they’re absolute. That’s the way they were intended.
“The next problem we have is related to this erosion of our rights, but I’d treat it as a whole separate category. It’s the unintended consequences of having created new rights—legal rights created by Congress and which Congress and bureaucrats have decided supercede or nullify our natural rights. These include the new rights that have come about as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Environmental Protection Act, and the American Disabilities Act. Unlike our natural rights, which come to us at the expense of no one else, the new rights have to be provided by someone else. ...
<snip>
“Last of all, but not least, our economy is no longer a true free market economy. It is now one of the socialist economies. We’re now a fascist economy. For all of our posturing about how bad fascism is, we have created a fascist economy as a compromise between capitalism and communism.
(Excerpt) Read more at backwoodshome.com ...
Read it all. It sounds about right to me unfortunately.
So, even if some of us get it and try to stop the onslaught on our freedoms, the powers that be scream anarchy and chaos and the rest of us sheep will agree and nothing will be done. The govt failing that in that, which seems unlikely, more legal issues will be resolved without juries with the end result being that the govt gets to keep the status-quo.
Doesn’t sound too promising.
We have been under a dictatorship for a long time, it has many heads (congress and judges) instead of only one...that does not make it less a dictatorship...It started in the 60's when congress stopped representing the citizens and did what was good for themselves..
This is a very good point, one I haven't seen made before here.
The "rotten borough" system persisted in England until the mid-1800's, when it was finally reformed. Until then, parliamentary seats based on medieval population patterns and having few contemporary constituents served as safe seats and political spoils. Control of them allowed moneyed interests to control Parliament.
Lot's of people forget that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against a plan, implemented by Parliament, to give the East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade.
Bookmark for careful read.
“Publius” was the moniker of the pro-constitutionalists.
Robert Yates of NY, the primary anti-consitutionalist used “Brutus.” Quite appropriate. IIRC, the few good points he made were overwhelmed by his general hysteria against replacing the Articles of Confederation.
The mood of 1787-88.
There may be some crucial line(s) in the sand which the government may attempt to cross which cold result in a citizens revolt. Examples are an attempt to ban second amendment rights or extremely hight taxation. Once a revolt start more than just the trigger of the revolt is changed. I believe that fascists or outright communists cannot help themselves and will try to achieve total control. One day they will cross the line.
bump 19
You’re welcome.
Thanks.....I saved that for better reading time.
Bump for later reading...
btt
wintertime wrote:
The author misses one of the signs. I would add a sixth:
The Marxists have nearly total control over our government K-12 schools and colleges and universities! Once they took hold of the schools those graduates then took over the culture.
I agree there, and I do think that could be a separate issue.
Although the problem actually stems from his second point, the creation of new “rights,” created by governments and provided by governments. We now have a “right to a free (publicly funded) education.” And it is sheer insanity to expect that the government that funds that education won’t twist the curriculum won’t present the most government friendly curriculum they can get away with. That’s how they maintain power. That is entirely predictable.
RC2 wrote:
I agree but, I read the Federalist Papers from time to time but only to see “why” they did what they did. Not to attempt to pick their minds as to what they really meant without saying it.
I agree with that for the most part. However, there are some times when contemporaneous statements by the founders does help us to understand the full meaning of the actual words in the Constitution. Take this quote from Madison:
“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare,in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.” — James Madison
- they may take the care of religion into their own hands;
- they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury;
- they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union;
- they may assume the provision of the poor;
- they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads;
There has been great confusion about the “general welfare” “clause” in the preamble to the Constitution, as well is in the preface of Article 1, Section 8, which only introduces the list of enumerated powers of Congress. This quote (and many others from the founders) makes it clear that there is no power to tax for the “general welfare.” Any law or court ruling to the contrary is based on either ignorance or willfully ignoring the actual words as well as the intent of the writers of the Constitution.
avg_freeper wrote:
You wouldn't happen to have links to the other parts of this would you?
Unfortunately, I don’t have an online source for these. All of these were posted here on FreeRepublic when they were published back in 2001 and 2002. And back then, we tended to post full text from articles, not just excerpts. I posted some of these myself. But it appears that the original threads from that time have been removed or lost somehow.
On the BackwoodsHome.com website, there are only two other columns by John Silveria on this topic, “The Coming American Dictatorship, Part XI,” from the current issue, and “The Coming American Dictatorship revisited,” from late 2002.
I hate to sound like I am trying to sell something here, but Backwoods Home used to have a CDROM with all of their back issues on it. You might try contacting them over on their web site and seeing if there is a CDROM covering the entire period when these columns were written.
By the way, most of John Silveria’s columns are great discussions of constitutional issues and government. The entire collection is well worth reading.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
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