Posted on 03/17/2010 10:55:56 PM PDT by Xottamoppa
Can’t go along on this one, friend. John Jay states, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Washingrad needs no such power. We fought Great Britain over a 2-cent tax on tea. The income tax was proposed by Lincoln and found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The only way they could make it Constitutional was to sew it on as an amendment. If the income tax were already legal and Constitutional, no amendmnet would have been necessary, would it? The fact of the Amendment is an argument for its own illegitimacy. WITHOUT AN INCOME TAX, the United States fought a revolution, secured its independence, defeated Mexico and Spain, ended slavery, built the tranconctinental railroad, wired the nation for telegraph and became a world power. What that Washingrad does with your income tax money is it, exactly, that they need to be doing? This country had ZERO income tax from 1607 to 1913 and did alright. The trouble with the fair tax is that it’s a tax to which Washingrad still has no right. Tax = “the power to destroy”. What is a “Fair Power to Destroy”?
Only since 1913 has Washingrad had the unlimited funds to create the monstrosity that sits astride the Potomac this day. I say it’s time we cut off their allowance. If they want money, let them do what the rest of us do-—produce something or get a real job.
Perfect. Exactly so.
“First and foremost, repeal the 17th Amendment.”
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I concur.
The Founders arranged for a lifetime appointment for Supreme Court Justices because they didn’t want them politicized by periodic re-election. It was hoped that justice would be furthered by removing the justices from the realm of politics.
That’s not exactly working out that way.
I would suggest we achieve the aim of the Founders by a modified means: SCOTUS appointees serve a single (non-renewable) twenty-year term on the bench. Frankly, I prefer 10 years.
This retains the aim of depoliticizing the bench while rectifying the lack of accountability for decades.
Thank you. I just learned something. However, then “we” would have to get dim governors to approve such an amendment? Good luck with that, too.
Strictly speaking anther amendment is not needed, the problem is the federal government has chosen to ignore the constitution including the treason they are committing in levying in waging war against the States (to keep them from enforcing the constitutional limitations on the Federal power upon them the Federal Government.)
The only way to get theses officials to just leave us alone for any short time is to pass anther amendment basically making it clear to them what the original function and powers were.
But of course they will honor that no longer then they honored their limitations the last time in the original constitution, probably less time.
As I said before, the fundamental problem is practicably thou the military as they demonstrated in the “Civil War” the Federal government has obtained the authority to interpret the extent of their own authority to the exclusion of the consent of the governed states.
This should not have happen but for a large number of reasons it did, and as a direct result of that the Federal government has found that it can erode its respect for its won limited to the point where we are now where the same government practically has no limits. That means no Constitution peroid!
You go back and read about what we were originally and all the fears about how government could act tyrannically and most all of them things are already long past true of this Federal government.
It has assumed effectively unrestricted power, this Health-care bill yet anther is a blatant demonstration of that fact! Our Constitution is for all intensive proposes dead because there is no interested party both able and willing to party protect and enforce it honestly.
A lot of people at this point actually disagree with many of the limitations of the Federal constitution we have gotten so uses to ignoring them in the development of our policy!
This is not new this has been practically the case for at least a 100 years, and its just been getting worse and worse. Conservatives wishing to retain our Constitutional federal republic HAVE BEEN LOSING badly!
There is not a lot left of our Federal constitutional republic still functioning after more then a 100 years of growing disregard...
The Federal government has little to no interest in limiting their own power not the the congress not the president and not the court.
This is not a theoretical truth, this is a repeatedly demonstrated fact again, and again, made clear over our history in their actions and judgments! this is easily proven by a comparison between what we have now in terms of Federal power and what we had when hoses powers were supposedly authorized, as well as what we were granting of those’s powers on the basis of what was being asked of us in things like the Federalist papers.
If a Constitutional system is going to work the Government bound by that Constitution CANNOT be in the position of being the sole or final interpreter and/or enforcer of that constitution!
Thats a clearly self-defeating conflict of interest, we know this not only in practice of the last 100+ years but in logic!
Everyone with children under 13 y/o will say that they cannot afford such "sacrifices and courage". Everyone over 40 y/o will tell you that they are too fat or their back hurts too much. I hear what you are saying. I just do not see it happening.
Can you afford to allow what little remains of your liberty to be solemn from you?
I ask you not to strain yourself nether physical nor financially. You must remember that above all your first priority and loyalty is to your God and your Family!
Do what you can, and think right in your own judgment as always, in the end this is about your family and yourself, don’t forget that fact.
Attempting to cure the decease by killing the patent is not a curing the decease.
If you must risk your life risk it so that you and your children may live their life, NOT out of some duty to your country.
Your country does not exist to get you killed, your country’s good similarly will not be served by the sacrifice of your good.
Your country exists to protect your rights and that of the rights of your posterity, when it no longer serves that function, your fight is to restore that country so that you and your liberty may be secured from the tyranny of what has taken the place of your country.
You do this not out of patriotism, but out of the vital interest of self and family preservation.
“Individual amendments do not require a full Constitutional Convention. I would never think of opening that Pandora’s Box and argued against that just last April in The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124105694445071685.html
“
The article negates the vital fact that if they proposed an entirely new Constitution as the last convention did in 1787.
Then regardless of the ratification requirements for it to come into effect, no State is a member of the new said “union” until its own individual ratification of the new Constitution.
That is the difference between the 3/4ths requirement required for an amendment to the existing constitution and union under the same and replacing the constitution and thus union all together.
Technically speaking the power to replace the Constitution and thus the union comes not from the Federal Constitution but from the natural law upon which the Constitution itself was formed in the first place.
This is why Article 5 of the United States Constitution only specify the using of a convention for the propose of amending the existing Constitution and union without the participation of the existing Federal government.
The only problem we have is the presidency established by the tyrant Lincoln and the “civil war” calming the Artical’s of confederation to still exist and as the authority which makes the union indivisible.
By that logic of course the union could never have existed in the first place by virtue of the lack of dividing authority within the British empire to form either the independent States or the original Confederation under the articles written in 1777 in the first place.
But thats a debunking of the legal argument for the Civil War, and we cant have that as 300+ thousand Yankees died to “save the union”.
Therefore adopting the irrational and self-defeating logic behind the existents of an “indivisible union”, then its either:
1: Impossible to do anything but amend the Federal constitution with a convention.
Except this assertion has already been demonstrated false in practice by the first convention in 1787(forming the existing Constitution), as well as by a “modern” Federal court ruling on the matter.
or
2: The Articles of confederation and the 13 State did not legally exist until the United Kingdom said so. If that be the case the Deceleration of Independents, the war, and all the other aspects of the American revolution were illegal and illegitimate acts, and we became independents when England said we were.
IE: Our Birth day of July 4, 1776 is a fraud, as is the whole doctrine of republicanism and the idea that legitimate power comes form the consent of the people rather then the Government.
In short everything we as Americans Stand for and believe is a compete and total fiction in the legal understanding of our Federal Government, as of the Civil War.
I may not understand the thrust of what you’re expressing here, but I think you’re discussing a proposal of a Constitutional overhaul or total rewrite. I certainly make no such suggestion, as it would be the sum of all terrors.
What I mentioned in my article is that if the grave error of a Constitutional Convention ever is convened, there are zero safeguards to guarantee we end up with anything even similar to the government under our existing Constitution.
In 1787 there actually was no call for an entirely new Constitution; it was merelyt supposed to be a tweaking of the Articles of Confederation, but the result was a whole new form of government under a completely new Constitution. A very fearsome warning of what could happen if we were to pop the hood on the Constitution in these hyper-partisan Marxist times.
Mr. Lincoln’s fanciful “Union” was a wishful figment of his ambitious imagination. As he conceived the union it was nothing more than a glorified Roach Motel: States check in, but they can’t check out.
Just how the Illinois lawyer waged a 5-year war without reading the Declaration of Independence remains one of history’s mysteries: “To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the governed; that when any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...”
Lincoln was a tragic Shakespearean figure; a good man who made a very terrible leader. On his watch the Republic died and Empire was born. He burned the village to save it. Sadly, he probably had the best of intentions all the way to the end.
Interestingly, america does not date her independence from the surrender of Cornwallis or from the signing of the Treaty of Paris. We do not count our birth from the hour King George released us or acknowledged our independence. Americans date their independence from...the hour we claimed independence for ourselves. not from the hour of its accomplishment, but from the hour we refused to be subjects any longer.
Would God we were so today.
But only every other year.
Mr. Lincoln’s fanciful “Union” was a wishful figment of his ambitious imagination. As he conceived the union it was nothing more than a glorified Roach Motel: States check in, but they can’t check out.
Just how the Illinois lawyer waged a 5-year war without reading the Declaration of Independence remains one of history’s mysteries: “To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the governed; that when any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...”
Lincoln was a tragic Shakespearean figure; a good man who made a very terrible leader. On his watch the Republic died and Empire was born. He burned the village to save it. Sadly, he probably had the best of intentions all the way to the end.
Interestingly, america does not date her independence from the surrender of Cornwallis or from the signing of the Treaty of Paris. We do not count our birth from the hour King George released us or acknowledged our independence. Americans date their independence from...the hour we claimed independence for ourselves. not from the hour of its accomplishment, but from the hour we refused to be subjects any longer.
Would God we were so today.
Notice my user-name? You may infer from it that I am an advocate for...reversing Appomattox! ; )
“The fact of the Amendment is an argument for its own illegitimacy.”
That’s an obviously ridiculous statement. Amendments are neither illegal, illegitimate, nor unintended. The Founders recognized that the future is unknown and a sufficiently large majority of honest men might agree changes were needed from time to time. Is the 1st Amendment guaranteeing Free Speech an “argument” that Free Speech is illegitimate ? Is the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms also illegitimate ? How about the Amendment that granted women the vote ? How about the 22nd Amendment that limits the President to serving two terms ? How about the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery ?
The idea that an Amendment was needed equates to illegitimacy of the idea is absurd.
Had you actually thought about what I wrote, you would have noticed that I said any income tax rate must not EXCEED 10% and must apply equally to EVERYONE, but there was no lower limit to the rate, meaning it could go to zero. Since 40% or people currently pay 0% and 75% of the people currently pay LESS than 10%, my Amendment would virtually guarantee a slow but inevitable demand to reduce that rate.
In the meantime, we would not default on the national debt, the interest on which is over $300B/yr, or military pensions and medical care of disabled veterans, which are another $300B/yr.
Are you really advocating that America be a deadbeat nation that refuses to pay back money it borrowed in good faith and leaves honored soldiers without their pensions ?
The same goes for an Amendment to limit spending. By only spending the amount ACTUALLY received in taxes during the previous year, you can never go into debt — because you can only spend money you have, and not borrow based on assumptions about the future. The spending is further limited by the 75% of the people that are trying to get their tax rate reduced to as low as it was before. They currently pay less than 10%, so my starting the rate *at* 10% will cause them to feel the pain and demand lower spending to get lower tax rates.
“This country had ZERO income tax from 1607 to 1913 and did alright.” First, we were not a “country” in 1607 but a colony of another “country” until 1776 which imposed plenty of taxes even though they were not on “income” but instead on property, foodstuffs, clothing, etc. Second, the natural barriers of oceans and distance that made self-defense a relatively inexpensive proposition prior to the 20th century no longer provide that security — and I don’t consider the 4% of GDP that we spend on our military to be excessive. I especially don’t begrudge our retired military their medical care and pensions.
Your ideas are only possible if you get to dictate reality, including dishonorably dismissing legitimate obligations. You seem to want to ditch our limited republican form of government and substitute anarchy. Since you consider any “right to tax” to be a “right to destroy”, you therefor have no way to fund anything EXCEPT anarchy.
My way has the advantage of actually being possible, legal, and honorable.
I do, thank you.
Well, you certainly refuted a lot of things I didn’t say or imply, if that’s some matter of accomplishment for you. Posts are usually relatively brief and hardly the medium for an all-encompassing exposition of all ramifications, disclaimers and exceptions. I’m merely making broad suggestions which, I think, is all anyone expects to find here. Were this a committee rather than a blog, I dare say we’d all work through the realities and details with a bit more thought.
Perhaps my wording was misleading. with reference to the income tax amendment of 1913, my point was that had an income tax been constitutional it would not have had to have been amended. To repeat, the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional when Lincoln tried it and the only thing that made it “constitutional” was gluing it on the bottom with the 16th Amendment. we could make redistribution of wealth “constitutional” by amendment, but it still puts it at odds with the grain and fabric-—the spirit and intent-—of the organic Constititution proper.
Applying the argument to amendments among the Bill of Rights is warping what I said. The Bill of Rights is an affirmation of existing (non-negotiable) natural rights, not an addition of new taxing powers.
The amendment that gave women the right to vote? Yes, the same principle, in fact, does apply. Just as, prior to amendment, government had no constitutional right to tax income, prior to amendment women historically had no right to vote. Whether they should or should not have had that right is another discussion. In fact, they had no vote until it was granted by amendment. Just as Washington had no right to tax income. Ditto presidential term limits slavery. I wasn’t discussing the merits of this or that power; only their authority in law. I’m trying to conduct a reasonable discussion, not an emotional one.
You broadened my application to apply generally, which was not my meaning.
By the same half-cocked hysteria you have me sticking our creditors with legitimate debts and turning wounded vets into the streets.
Do stick with what I’ve actually argued. By pointing out the incontestable fact that the Constitution nowhere (even today) authorizes a standing army-—I see you couldn’t find it in there, either, you’ve leaped to the conclusion that I either don’t believe in national defense or disparage veterans, neither of which, of course, is the case.
Like Socialist Security, it needs to end now. But because generations have already been swindled for decades by it, it has to be phased out at a rate that keeps the promises made as the victims were paying in through the years. There’s no tidy way out of the kind of messes Washingrad has cooked up for us all. Someone invariably gets stuck holding the bag because Marxism simply doesn’t work. But since Socialist Security is insolvent, the bleeding should be stopped at once. Then we back our way out by keeping all the commitments we can. one way would be to eliminate the Departments of Energy, Education, HHS,Transportation and Labor (for starters) and funnel the money into the socialist security money pit.
National debts, deficits, veterans’ benefits and all other legitimate expenses of government must be paid down by spending cuts and elimination of bureaucracy, not by further taxation.
If you highlight a copy of the Constitution, marking only the words that actually empower government to do anything, you will find that the entire scope of legitimate government can be reduced to one half of one side of one sheet of 8.5” X 11” paper. That simply doesn’t cost $11,000,000,000,000.00.
You caught me fairly in a genuine mistake when I applied “country” to the entire span from 1607 to 1913, but is this really the level on which you want to hold this discussion? You point out that the colonies were taxed by another country, but that doesn’t even speak to what I was expressing. America’s greatness was not the result or consequence of England’s taxes on propoerty, foodstuffs and clothing. British taxation misses the point entirely that we spread from coast to coast without a nickel of income tax collected by Washingrad.
I am no advocate of anarchy and you seem unable to conceive of a world before 1913, admitting no allowance for government without income tax. But for your closing remarks to be true, you must maintain that America lived under anarchy until Woodrow Wilson signed the 16th Amendment in 1913. It was (and is) possible to enjoy the benefit of limited Republican governance without an income tax. History will not tolerate any other recounting.
Because we have overspent for so long, it will take a long time to revert to a proper revenue system. precisely because we do have legitimate debts run up by illegitimate means. Honor certainly does dictate that we dig our way out with character and determination. And that need not imperil any of our patriotic soldiers, sailors, airmen and veterans.
If you still object to “the power to tax” being “the power to destroy”, your argument is not with me for quoting John Jay, but with the author of many of The Federalist Papers for saying so in the first place. As a Federalist, he certainly was no anarchist, was he? For an Anti-Federalist like Patrick Henry or me, he was a bit too Statist.
You have to remember that we’re a long way from the Republic our Founders bought us. Consider-—and I mean think about, ponder, MEDITATE A MOMENT ON Thomas Jefferson’s summation of the entire proper scope of government: “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is ALL from which the laws ought to restrain him.”
ALL?
All. For Jefferson, NO law was authoritative, binding or legitimate unless it directly kept me out of your business and you out of mine. Weighed in that scale, how many of the laws we have today are legitimate? For Jefferson, you were a sovereign free man and so was I. And the one AND ONLY genuine function of government was to police the line drawn between us. That can’t possibly cost $11,000,000,000,000.00.
If you want to accuse Jefferson and Jay of anarchy, you may, but they weren’t. We simply live in so totalitarian a government today that a Constitutional Republic looks like anarchy from here.
And...in a sense that’s a real danger. That generation could afford to live under near-anarchic freedoms becvause they shouldered the manly moral weight of personal responsibility. Because they were upright, honorable, God-fearing, self-governing men, they had little need of the external machinery of government. If this generation, however, has not the character and morality to responsibly handle that degree of liberty, anarchy might result indeed. Anarchy is not a matter of what happens in the streets. It’s a condition of the human heart. A righteous man of character will seek liberty where a libertine will seek only license. Men of character seek the freedom to do right. Men without it seek only the freedom to do wrong. The former is liberty, the latter anarchy. That’s the difference.
See ? You can make intelligent statements when you want to. I agree with most of those and I’m glad to see you aren’t such a simpleton as your original response to me indicated.
I think my comments were exactly on point in response to your original positions staked out here:
*Can’t go along on this one, friend. John Jay states, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Washingrad needs no such power. *
How else was I to take such a statement other than as a declaration that you refuse Washington the power to tax entirely ? You did not limit your statement to only “income taxes” as being destructive nor offer any other taxes as being valid. Having no tax revenue results inescapably in all the defaulted obligations I listed.
*The only way they could make it Constitutional was to sew it on as an amendment. The fact of the Amendment is an argument for its own illegitimacy.*
That certainly sounds like an absurd statement to me. The fact that laws require a basis in an Amendment is certainly NOT “an argument for its own illegitimacy”.
*What that Washingrad does with your income tax money is it, exactly, that they need to be doing?*
I simply answered your question with regard to debt service and military pensions, etc. as to “what they need to be doing”. It hardly seems fair to complain that I answered your question.
*I say it’s time we cut off their allowance. If they want money, let them do what the rest of us do-—produce something or get a real job.*
Again, that seems to reinforce the idea that you would disallow ALL tax revenue — leaving only anarchy.
You have to be aware that both the Left and even people like O’Reilly scan boards like Free Republic looking for examples of extreme statements they can use to discredit us all as Right Wing Extremists and Anarchists.
* How else was I to take such a statement other than as a declaration that you refuse Washington the power to tax entirely ?
As my case is made from the Constitution, that necessarily includes Article I., Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes...” One cannot hold the Constitution inviolate without an acknowledgement that Washington has the powers (few and defined) given it. A familiarity with the document renders this one of those “goes without saying” matters, so I didn’t say it expressly because it was implicit within the text. The tax on income was always in view.
I still maintain that when you have to add an amendment to force the constitutionality of a principle previously found unconstitutional by the Court, it is an evidence that the principle you are adding was not found in the original text (else would not have to be added...) and therefore is a forceful argument that it is a principle alien to the Founders’ conceptions and thus, yes, an argument for its own illegitimacy. You may differ, as you do, but I contend for the statement because the Sixteenth Amendment stands in contrast, not comparison, to the entire grain of the rest of the document.
* It hardly seems fair to complain that I answered your question.
This is a good comeback and not without its merits, so I’ll pass on the temptation to defend my original statement. In asking what D.C. does with your income tax that needs doing, I simply mean that education is paid for by property taxes (in the main), roads by fuel taxes and the cost of our defense is equal to the amount of corporate taxes in the country. Income tax revenue goes exclusively to pay interest on our ridiculous debts in foreign banks for all of the pork and Socialism we could (and should) do without. Since we did buy it, we do need to pay for it, but we need to STOP BUYING IT.
My argument is simply that Washington live within the means provided by the original text of the Constitution as written by the Framers. Money is power and the Framers provided for very little of it to keep Washington from assuming the powers they now claim. Government’s scope and scale had grown exponentially since 1913 and this was made possible only by the sudden influx of revenue geenerated by the plunder of the People’s wages. Our fatal mistake was in allowing Washington more money and more armaments than the People hold as a check upon it. By giving them trillions we have given them an overwhelming power against us. By providing them with a standing army, we have rendered our pop-guns useless as an insurance policy against tyranny. Jefferson spoke of “criminals and government” in the same breath as “the greatest threat” to our liberties. And we have overfunded and overarmed the criminals in government to our own peril. You would not arm and pay a robber, but we have and do.
And Jefferson, by the way, made the entire Louisiana Purchase without a nickel of income tax. The opportunity was golden, but never did it occur to him to fund the no-brainer by demanding a cut of every American’s earnings-—something to which the government has no title, but which Karl Marx made one of the planks of his Manifesto.
It is impossible to have limited government when you empower tyrants with unlimited funds.
As for O’Reilly and Leftists, they will always find fodder for their slants with or without me. While I never like arming my enemies, neither do I live my life in their service, express myself by their guidelines or entertain principles with any reference to them at all. I will not empower them at the expense of my natural rights under the First Amendment. After all, they never curb their prejudices from respect to my point of view.
My principles derive from the founders and their legacy in law. I should hope that would place me out of step with those out of step with the Constitution. That’s precisely the company I prefer. To be deemed “extremist” by radicals is an honour I embrace. But weighing whether what I firmly believe may or may not be counted extreme by those whose scales measure only their own arrogance is a favor I will not do my enemies. They discredit themselves, not my integrity. In these times of extreme danger and extreme debt, the man who fails to be extreme in his patriotism is unworthy the name “American”. I believe what I believe without reference or resort to anyone else’s pocket scale, just as you should. If that places me on the Left, the Right or elsewhere, I leave that to those who measure principle over having it. I aspire, as yet unsuccessfully, to be as extreme as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry without whom we would not have had a Republic to begin with. And with the latter, I can only say, if this be treason, make the most of it.
It is a fearful thing indeed when a stern argument for limited government under the rule of law as embodied by the United States Constitution classes an American as a “Right-Wing Extremist and Anarchist” by even his countrymen who profess a love of liberty.
http://www.freelythinking.com/The_Law.pdf
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