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?
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.”
All quite true. However, it seems pretty clear that at minimum a very large minority and quite possibly on many issues a majority of “the people” are in favor of these usurpations.
So “the people” is not a unified group opposed to the government. Unfortunately.
Any revolt against this government will be an ideological civil war, not a regional one, and will be very nasty. See Spanish Civil War for a start on what it would be like.
Here are a few more questions:
What if a significant percentage of the population figured out that the feds didn’t give a damn about the Constitution and our laws, giving them lip service when convenient and ignoring them when it wasn’t, and decided that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?
What if just 1% of gun owners - those roughly 900,000 people motivated most by the ideals of the American Revolution, those equipped with the best weapons and tactical gear available to civilians, those best trained in the use of those items and in small unit tactics - decided that the feds were a domestic enemy of the people and the Constitution, and acted accordingly?
What would the feds be able to do to combat some 900,000 highly motivated people spread across a continent intent on a replay of the American Revolution, when the feds could barely cope with the sloppy and incompetent “Beltway sniper” and his teenage accomplice?
Just asking.
What if the concept of “the consent of the governed” was finally rendered moot at Appomattox in 1865?
What we have today is the inevitable result.
The 2nd Amendment allowed for CW-I. The next “CW” would look more like Iraq or Afghanistan. That worked out well.
“Lock and load?”
>>>>>>>>>>
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
(That’s in quotes, y’all - ran across it somewhere, written, I think, by a bunch of dead, male, one-percent, isolationist Crackers clinging to their guns and Bibles. Take it for what it’s worth.)
The writers of the Declaration of Independence put it well, there’s no improving on that.
IF?!?
The people are the government. The soldier in the field, the policeman on the beat, the government employee in his office, are all part of the people.
Only if we willingly turn on ourselves do we violate the constitution. Only if we allow corrupt politicians to divide us rather than unite us will we self destruct.
No constitution will not work unless we have moral citizens electing moral leaders. An American Idol mentality selecting the sexiest candidate is bound for disaster.
The problem is not the constitution or the government, it is the people doing the choosing.
It’s going to get very dark for a long time.
When at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Do you think that the American Revolution worked out smoothly, with no slip-ups, no enemy victories, no casualties? The obvious answer is "no" - but that didn't prevent the Founding Generation from regrouping, licking its collective wounds and trying again and again until the Brits tired of fighting us and left.
To those on this thread who think that the fact that so many are dependent upon and supportive of the feds means an automatic defeat: think again. First off, if they're so dependent, then by definition they're sheep. Second, the American Revolution was not supported by all of the people - roughly 1/3 of the population were Loyalists and not only didn't help, but actively hindered the Revolution and cooperated with the British tyrants...and yet it is they who left for Canada or England when the bullets stopped flying. It is good to be aware of and realistic about what resources your enemy has at his disposal, but it is unwise to think that there is no way to defeat Leviathan...just ask the cave-dwellers in Afghanistan, who have defeated the 2 most powerful empires known to human history in a single generation.
The government is just a symptom of the citizenry choosing dependence over independence. Until that changes, we will continue with the same pattern.
“See Spanish Civil War for a start on what it would be like.”
Yes. Hardly anyone knows what the SCW was about or looked like or if it even happened. Those who do are almost always parroting the ‘red’ notion of what it looked like.
I have been discussing this for years with my friends (I have patient friends) but almost every faction in America today has an analog to some faction in the SCW. The only thing preventing it here is a more generalized prosperity, but that is fading.
God deliver us from such a trial.
Brilliance from the man with the lowest hairline in history.
Not that I disagree, because I do agree. But tread carefully my brother, as we discuss theoretical scenarios.
“What do you mean “if”, Andy? “
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Looks like “if” has gone the way of “is,” for the most part—both by supposed presidential whim!
Semper watching!
-GyG
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You say that like it is a bad thing.
I think we mentally look back on our Civil War and assume that is approximately what a replay would be like.
However, our CW was, despite its blood and terror, far and away the most gentlemanly great civil war in history. Largely because it was primarily, though not exclusively, a regional war instead of an ideological one.
The border states got closer to what most civil wars are like, particularly in MO and KS.
In most civil wars the enemy is not just the enemy, he’s a traitor. Things get real personal real fast.
Spain during its CW was roughly the size of USA during ours. In our CW the total of dead civilians from atrocities was probably in the very low thousands, if that. In Spain, despite a death toll among combatants about half that of our war, the dead civilians killed intentionally, not in collateral damage, totaled somewhere around 200,000.
What if a state(e) started to print it’s own money and forming voluntary infantry regiments with the governor as their C-in-C?
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