Posted on 04/12/2012 7:14:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation -- in some cases the same human beings -- that wrote in the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech," also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the government? What if the feds don't regard the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land?
What if the government regards the Constitution as merely a guideline to be referred to from time to time, or a myth to be foisted upon the voters, but not as a historic delegation of power that lawfully limits the federal government? What if Congress knows that most of what it regulates puts it outside the confines of the Constitution, but it does whatever it can get away with? What if the feds don't think that the Constitution was written to keep them off the people's backs?
What if there's no substantial difference between the two major political parties? What if the same political mentality that gave us the Patriot Act, with its federal agent-written search warrants that permit unconstitutional spying on us, also gave us Obamacare, with its mandate to buy health insurance, even if we don't want or need it? What if both political parties love power more than freedom? What if both parties have used the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to stretch the power of the federal government far beyond its constitutionally ordained boundaries and well beyond the plain meaning of words?
What if both parties love war because the public is more docile during war and permits higher taxes and more federal theft of freedom from individuals and power from the states? What if none of these recent wars has made us freer or safer, but just poorer?
What if Congress bribed the states with cash in return for their enacting legislation that Congress likes, but cannot lawfully enact? What if Congress went to all states in the union and offered them cash to repave their interstate highways, if the states only lowered their speed limits? What if the states took that deal? What if the Supreme Court approved this bribery and then Congress did it again and again? What if this bribery were a way for Congress to get around the few constitutional limitations that Congress acknowledges?
What if Congress believes that it can spend tax dollars on anything it pleases and tie any strings it wants to that spending? What if Congress uses its taxing and spending power to regulate anything it wants to control, whether authorized by the Constitution or not? What if anyone other than members of Congress offered state legislatures cash in return for favorable legislation? What if Congress wrote laws that let it break laws that ordinary people would be prosecuted for breaking?
What if the Declaration of Independence says that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed? What if the government claims to derive powers from some other source that it will not -- because it cannot -- name? What if we never gave the government the power to spy on us, to print worthless cash, to kill in our names, to force us to buy health insurance or to waste our money by telling us that exercise is good and sugar is bad?
What if we never gave the government the power to bribe the poor with welfare or the middle class with tax breaks or the rich with bailouts or the states with cash? What if we don't consent to what has become of the government? What if the Constitution has been tacitly amended by the consent of both political parties, whereby instead of ratifying amendments, all three branches of government merely look the other way when the government violates the Constitution? What if the president cannot constitutionally bomb whatever country he wants? What if the Congress cannot constitutionally exempt its members from the laws that govern the rest of us? What if the courts cannot constitutionally invent a right to kill babies in the womb?
What if the federal government is out of control, no matter which party controls it? What if there is only harmony on Capitol Hill when government is growing and personal liberty is shrinking? What if the presidential race this fall will not be between good and evil, between right and left, between free markets and central planning or even between constitutional government and Big Government; but only about how much bigger Big Government should get?
What if enough is enough? What do we do about it? What if it's too late?
i fear you may be right. It is already...the time for choosing was decades ago and no one truly heeded the warnings. Incremental subtle steps have surely destroyed any chance at an easy u-turn.
As Rob Port wrote the other day:
“I’m not talking ideology here. This isn’t about conservatism versus liberalism and philosophical viewpoints on the appropriate role of government in our lives. Those debates are important, but this is simple math. The discretionary portion of our national budget is roughly $1.3 trillion. The mandatory spending portion – Social Security, Medicare and interest on the national debt – is roughly $2.3 trillion.
We’re running an annual budget deficit of well over $1 trillion, meaning that even if we cut every penny of discretionary spending (all the money for the FBI and the national parks and the military, etc., etc.) we’d still have a deficit problem.”
So with the majority of the people living in the USA getting something free from the government, it is truly a tough sell to cut entitlement spending.
No easy u-turn after getting everyone addicted to ‘free’ (ie. Child Tax Credit, Food Stamps, Medicare etc)...it truly is sad that they made these ‘mandatory’ spending!
You have a typo. It's supposed to be "If at first you don't secede...." ;)
Would that also include consent of the chattel which the side trumpeting this "consent of the governed" meme never granted?
Orwell - 1984 - Up is down - democrat is liberal - wrong is Right.
And fighting to keep and extend slavery becomes a "states rights" issue... and a parody.
Save for later.
forgive me for the following presumption, but I think Ancesthntr takes for granted that big Gubmint has been watching Freep for years - hell, when Janet the fascist wrote that rightwing terrorist threat bulletin some time back, she probably wanted to include the FR logo as the main illustration on the front page!
It seems to me that he is ready to say no when the authorities start the confiscation of weapons, and probably ready to fight when the jackboots come back to knock on (or knock down...) the door when he doesn’t comply.
And for Anceshntr, I might have you sized up wrong on this, but that’s not the meat of this matter. The real question is how many of us will react when the authorities “ask” for our weapons.
Look at how it happened historically. Hitler claimed the greater good of society was served by the weapons confiscation, blamed the Jews, disarmed them first - then unleashed kristalnacht. Likewise Stalin, Mao, the Turks against the Armenians, and so on. And for those who say it can’t happen here (not you two guys, you know better) I offer Katrina and the local law confiscating guns.
People give up their weapons for fear of what can happen to our families if they don’t... even as we know enough about human history that the thinking part of our brains tells us it will only be worse if we do give up our weapons.
That’s the question, Fraters — and we won’t know the answer as a society until - like a military unit seeing combat action for the first time - we see the proverbial “elephant” knocking on our door with the choice at hand.
JG
I’m aware of the unconstitutional laws that Congress passes every session. As far as I know no Congressmen are on the CWII Ping List! They should be.
If you wait until there is a SWAT stack outside your door you’ve waited far too long to be of any use to team Freedom in the fight to restore liberty. Your choices then are very limited: surrender or die.
If OpFor convinces us that nothing except them at our own front door is worth fighting for then we have already lost.
It doesn't matter if the "War between the States" was over Slavery, States Rights, or Gay rights...the end result is that the Constitutional Republic ended on 1865 and a Federal leviathan took over. Permanently.
.the end result is that the Constitutional Republic ended on 1865 and a Federal leviathan took over. Permanently.
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Indeed, thanks to Abe the tyrant.
>George Wallace set the precedent for that when he acknowledged that a U. S, Marshal could arrest him, of defying a court. Since then federal courts have cr@pped all over the governors.
“Precedent” is merely the judicial branch playing the children’s game of ‘telephone’ with respect to your rights.
Jefferson’s own definition as you have quoted it defines “chr*stianity” as adherence to the ethical concepts taught by J*sus rather than to any dogmatic religion. This is the same “chr*stianity” of the National and World Council of Churches, Barak Obama, and ever liberal chr*stian.
Really? It seems like a rephrasing of the latter half of James’s (1:27) comment on God’s view of religion:
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Or am I misreading the quote? (If so, howso?)
Also, this verse seems to indicate that ‘religious’ ‘traditions’ are of no value in God’s sight; indeed, Jesus himself was harshly critical of ‘tradition’: “[...] And you reject the word of God for the traditions that you deliver, and many things like these you do.” (Mark 7:13, Aramaic Bible in Plain English)
agreed - that’s the second visit I refer to. It’s the first visit in my comments where the real decision will be made.
for my part, once a man stands up and says NO to the government in this context, then everything changes and he should live his life accordingly. There really is no other way, we are either Free or not.
Not true. The 'subordination of personal interests to the welfare of the community' is a collective concept and has NO place in a free Republic.
It will he remembered, that the object of the several states in the adoption of that instrument, was not the establishment of a general consolidated government, which should swallow up the state sovereignties, and annihilate their several jurisdictions, and powers, as states; but a federal government, with powers limited to certain determinate objects; viz. their intercourse and concerns with foreign nations; and with each other, as separate and independent states; and, as members of the same confederacy: leaving the administration of their internal, and domestic concerns, to the absolute and uncontrolable jurisdiction of the states, respectively; except in one or two particular instances, specified, and enumerated in the constitution. And because this principle was supposed not to have been expressed with sufficient precision, and certainty, an amendatory article was proposed, adopted, and ratified; whereby it is expressly declared, that, "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."
View of the Constitution of the United States
Should that be the case, then you are correct.
I was referencing voluntary which is why I mentioned the last line of the Declaration of Independence to clarify. “...And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Have a great Texan day!
John Adams:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
The reason it’s for only a moral and religious people is that the moral and religious are less likely (not guaranteed, but less likely) to fall into the trappings of power.
There are all sorts of enforcement mechanisms built into our government. Elections and Impeachments for example. The crime is that they are not used to remove from power those that should be removed - those that threaten liberty.
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