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?
We have ALREADY been destroyed. It has been so subtle, and will become so obviously thorough in the next administration.
The American Treasury has been pillaged. By both sides of the aisle. Our government is literally out of control. There iare no Medicare or Social Security funds remaining . In March it turns out we financed almost 60% of our spending.
Practically speaking, our enemies have vanquished us. There will simply be no way to maintain carrier battle fleets in action, over 150 overseas garrisons,, and maintain peace at home.
Rome learned this the hard way 1600 years ago. Rome died incrementally-the first “sack” occurred in 410....the final in 455 AD.
The first of the USA was, arguably, October 3rd, 2008 with passage of TARP......
You're not seriously comparing our population to theirs? The Afghans have been at each others throats and the throats of their invaders for a thousand years or more. They are seasoned fighters, illiterate, third world savages. They are mostly Muslim and still with all of that hatred and animalism pent up inside of them...how long did it take to run the Russkies out? At what cost? That cost in lives is exactly what we refuse to pay. We're leaving because our people refuse to put up with the cost in lives. This mindset has infected the politics and therein lies our weakness. It has been so since Vietnam. Old General Giap once said something to the effect that we will kill a thousand of theirs for every one of ours that dies and yet they will still win in the long run of attrition. We will only bleed just so much before we cut and run. When I say "WE" I mean our civil population of sheep, not the sheepdogs in the military! But our population has had the guts so bred out of them that once our freedoms are lost they're gone forever because only bloodshed will bring them back and the likes of the Founding Fathers are not to be found here anymore. We've been wussified because we allowed the liberals to infect the schools since the late 1950's.
“A war of factions, various shady organizations, on the government side, taking action in the dead of night against opponents, using the aparatus of the state to find dissidents and using off-the-books federsal alphabet soup groups to persecute them.
The rebels will use typical rebel tactics, including sabotage and targeted assassinations.
Archy’s a smart guy, he’s thought about this stuff a lot. It’s a really grim picture. To this day many people in South America don’t know what happened to their dad or brother, only that he was taken away by men in black at 11:30 PM on a Tuesday in July and never seen again. “
I agree with this, and find that this viewpoint most reasonably explains the various legal devices being put into place to permit such government wholesale confiscation, imprisonment and murder to be ‘legal.’ The folks putting this enabling legislation/code in place are planning for this, and I suspect DHS is the lynchpin of their gameplan.
Our Constitutions are the instruments of the people, not of the lawyers
-- Joseph Story, Constitution (5th ed.) 345, SS 451."Every word employed in the Constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, rounded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings. The people make them, the people adopt them, the people must be supposed to read them, with the help of common-sense, and cannot be presumed to admit in them any recondite meaning or any extraordinary gloss."
The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time.
-Thomas Jefferson-
He didn't say might be, should be, ought to be, could be...he said MUST be. I'm not advocating for anything.
My point is that the founding fathers knew the corrupt nature of men in power. Thomas Jefferson seems to be saying that blood will be shed once again to preserve liberty.
Reading the writings of our forefathers, it would seem these quotes were divinely inspired.
Am I see this incorrectly y'all?
I don't worship any man.
But Thomas Jefferson certainly said a whole lot of things I wholeheartedly agree with.
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." "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..."
The United States barely resembles the country I remember from 1960s and early 70’s. I don’t have any expectation of it be recognizable in two centuries.
I was referring to the Soviets and the Americans - the Russkies are gone, and we’re going soon. The cave-dwellers beat us - granted, with some help from outside both times, but still, they are the ones that had to live with hundreds of thousands of foreign troops, shoot them, bomb them, etc.
The bottom line is that an insurgency in this country would overwhelm the military and police - it would be everywhere, and the cost of imposing martial law in large areas would destroy the government, esp. if the gov’t was the target. That is, after all, why the 2nd Amendment exists - to prevent a tryrannical regime from occupying and ruling this nation, whether that regime originates from outside or inside the nation.
“The United States barely resembles the country I remember from 1960s and early 70’s.”...
Agreed...The whack radical left is railroading the country staight over the cliff.
Then for you, no problem. Also for you grandchildren, living in a world designed on another continent without their input. If that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel. Won’t argue with you further.
What if?
And Judge Napolitano is correct.
My friends think I have a certain aims toward the democrats but I’m nearly as uncomfortable with my own supposed party.
Jefferson supported the French Revolution. Do you?
Reading the writings of our forefathers, it would seem these quotes were divinely inspired.
That sounds like something a henotheistic idolator would say.
We lost the Constitution that was penned by the founders and supported by the Federalist papers -
As soon as the Constitution was amended to directly elect Senators, rather than have them appointed by members of the State Legislators. As appointees, they were subject to recall if the Senator did not abide by the interests of the individual state.
That check and balance of states rights was completely upended by having the people directly elect Senators for six years.
Perhaps a reversion to the way the founders set up the power balance - one house for the people, the other house for the states - could totally transform the current legislative process. - For the better!
(And it could keep Chuckie Schumer only on NY TV; Boxer on CA TV)
What is your position on the French Revolution? Do you think that was a good thing as Jefferson did?
Our founders were a fractious bunch. Jefferson's faction was definitely pro-Jacobin. He was also highly critical of traditional religion. But because he believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution and states' rights he is excused for his irreverence.
>>”An amendment? The fundamental check on the government power was the second afterthought?”
Because civilized people talk through their differences (1st amendment) before they start shooting.
Secondly, you're obviously spoiling for an argument...go somewhere else, perhaps the religion thread might play your game. I'm not biting.
Form 13 seperate countries (get it 13 colonies) with a shared currency and wish everyone well.
New England, Mid-Atlantic, SouthEast, Florida, Mid-west, South, Texas,South West, North West, California, Hawaii, Alaska.
I think I am missing one...?
Otherwise, do we have a Thomas Jefferson in the crowd to re-declare our independence?
They were unconstitutional, as they were outside the area of the enumerated jurisdiction of the federal government.
Why in the world would we ignore pertinent facts?
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They were passed to protect our new country from subversion by agents and fellow travelers of Jacobin France.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
William Pitt
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Conservative worship of Thomas Jefferson has got to stop.
No. Not now. Not EVER!
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
--Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.
Well, there were some supremely important things they all agreed on.
Just to name a few:
That our rights come from God, not from any man.
That the reason for being of government is to equally protect the aforesaid rights.
That those rights preceded and supersede any written document or man-made law.
That our Constitution is the expression and the instrument of the people, who are sovereign under God.
And so, the answer to the question at the top of this thread, "What If the Government Rejects the Constitution?" is, throw out the officers of government and start anew with those who will respect our rights, the sovereignty of the people, and the authority of the Constitution.
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