Is the United States Broken?

FreeRepublic ^ | 4/04/2002 | B. A. Conservative

[B. A. Conservative]

There have been 26 people who responded to the initial post in this series entitled, "Not Goint to Take It Anymore". I have tried to infer their thinking regarding the underlying premise of the series: the United States as defined under our Constitution has ceased to exist. There are at least two separate population groups living within the geographical confines of the United States. The two groups have diametrically opposing views of government. There is some over-lapping of the geographic areas occupied by the two groups, but surprisingly the over-lap is less than most imagine. This makes a geo-political division between the groups feasible and perhaps desireable.

Of the 26 replies, there was only one who felt that the idea that the United States is broken was treachery or treasonous. There were four who plan to monitor these threads and who seemed undecided. Most respondents agree that the United States is in fact broken.

I am posting the first question now as its own thread to provide additional opportunities to recruit additional Freepers to participate in the discussion and for each participant to have a venue to clearly state their own opinions.

Is the United States broken?

[Political Junkie Too]

Have you ever looked in library at our tax code? Not only is beyond the scope of any average American, it is beyond the scope of its authors and enforcers... Look at the rest of the US code, state codes, municipal codes and the train loads of regulations that are issued by governments... If you are still reading, now ask your self if most of these rules actually make any sense or are they often confusing and contradictory?

Hamilton or Madison wrote in Federalist 62 (Concerning the Constitution of the Senate):

It may be affirmed, on the best grounds, that no small share of the present embarrassments of America is to be charged on the blunders of our governments; and that these have proceeded from the heads rather than the hearts of most of the authors of them. What indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws, which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; so many impeachments exhibited by each succeeding against each preceding session;

-PJ

[B. A. Conservative]

Campaign Finance Reform is only a last straw or perhaps a straw dog. It is also impossible. The Constitution could be amended to allow restrictions on campaigns in any number of ways. There is only one form of reform that could possibly work, TERM LIMITS. Human beings are incredibly resourceful, both for good or bad. No one is clever enough to write enough laws with sufficient precision to accomplish anything. Look at the War on Drugs. Are there more or less drugs used by fewer people today than before the war was begun? All that the war on drugs has accomplished is to increase the price of drugs forcing more people to resort to crime as the only means by which they can generate the cash they need or want to spend on drugs. It has not reduced the number of users or the amount used or the availability of drugs.

The oldest crime is supposedly prostitution. Have laws controlled or affected it? Or have such laws corrupted our politicians and police officials? The list of bad and unnecessary laws is endless. And every one of them has had both the direct and indirect effect of subsidizing the corruption of our political and law enforcement structures. The result is no demonstrable benefit, but additional crime and corruption as a price. And have these laws added to our freedoms or taken away freedoms? The RICO acts pushed by Republicans are among the most repugnant vile acts ever conceived by man. Hitler would be embarrassed that he didn't think of them first. We aren't being pushed into the gas chambers yet, but every April 15, they are loading more passengers on the train. And Bush's push for homeland security is creating the foundation for the passenger lists of the future.

[Huck]

There is only one form of reform that could possibly work, TERM LIMITS.

I am opposed to term limits. Why give a choice away? I suggest salary limits.

[headsonpikes]

Bumping your excellent thread.

[moderation_is_not_a_bad_thing]

"And so our society, culture, AND gov't have evolved. Sometimes the pendulum swings right and sometimes left, but through compromise we find a course that balances the needs of the many against the rights of the individual."

I will have more to say after you have a chance to reply to my private email, but I can't let this remark pass without comment. This is an almost exact paraphrase of Marx, "To each according to his needs, and from each according to their means."

Well, you seem to read things differently than I do. My statement has absolutely nothing to do with Marx; perhaps you're starting to see socialists everywhere. What I was very specifically referring to are rights. The rights of the individual are constantly being balanced against the decisions of the majority. In a democracy the majority tend to get their way and so individual rights were specified in the bill of rights.

As for your name, "Moderation in the defense of liberty is no virtue; extemeism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice." I am fairly confidant that you are going to have very little to say that I am going to support, and maybe a lot with which I am going to take issue. I hate commpromise. Compromising truth or freedom is to lose both.

My screen name is merely a counterbalance to the obvious extremism that some seem to deify. Both extremism AND moderation have their purposes; I'm trying remind some people around here of that fact. As for your statements on compromise, I'm interested in how you interact with other human beings on a daily basis WITHOUT compromise. Do you always get your way and everyone else can go to hell? How do you even manage to merge onto a highway when driving? Compromise is part of life, and very few issues are so black or white as to eliminate that reality.

Just as a means of throwing down the guantlet: Everything that Democrats say or believe is wrong.

I can only guess then that you've never actually listened to any Democrats if you assume that every last one is wrong and/or corrupt. That is an oversimplification which allows you to ignore anything said since afterall you know that it's wrong beforehand.

The Democratic Party is founded on a corrupt principle and all who support it are inherently corrupt. No man has the right to take the property of another man without his consent. No man has the right to give the property of one man to someone else. Government cannot be empowered to do for one man what he cannot do for himself. If you believe otherwise, the only way we can live together peacefully is to live in separate countries. I refuse to accept a government that believes otherwise and intend to change the government through elections or to secede. There will be no compromises from me.

We ALL benefit from gov't spending. I find that most people are more than willing to cut spending in every direction except any spending that they benefit from, which is why we have so much trouble eliminating a program or agency once it's been established. But I am prepared to live peacefully regardless. You are free to change the system from within the system, but non-peaceful means will not be looked on favorably but the rest of society.

[colorado tanker]

You make good points about taxation and the regulatory state. The tax code and medicare regulations are now so complex the administering agencies can't interpret them with consistency, even though they confidently prosecute alleged violators!

Bottom line is I agree we are over-taxed and over-regulated. The only solution is for conservatives to continure to fight for what is right, and what made us prosperous. We've come a long way from the '60's, when liberals dominated all three branches of government.

But there is still nowhere else in the world I would rather live and raise my family. God Bless America, problems and all.

[Rule of Law]

The United States government is no longer anyway near the bounds set forth in the Constitution. It is no longer a question of whether the US is broken, but what we are going to do about it.

Dr. Walter Williams has run two articles suggesting alternatives. One is secession. The other is nullification. He hints in passing that there is a third option -- armed rebellion.

People continue to raise objections to both secession and nullification. Most of these boil down to the idea that anyone who tries them is going to get squashed by the federal government.

Which leaves the third option.

There is a fourth option. That is to leave.

Our government is too efficient -- in a bad way. That's not to say it does things right, but it is very good at stomping on the citizens. There are plenty of governments out there who, while not as free on paper, are so inefficient that you can live your life without government interference. Many people are already choosing this option and it may be the best.

Notice I did not say that "reforming the GOP" or the "election process" are viable options. If there is anything the last 40 or so years should have taught us, it's that the two parties are incorrigible. Both are determined to bring about socialism.

[tacticalogic]

I find far too many people who hold the Supremes as the last sacred cow of politics, and refuse to even consider that a justice might make a decision under the influence of someone with sufficient access to them.

The effect of FDR's Court Packing Bill on the USSC in 1937 should be ample demonstration that the Supremes can be suceptible to coercion.

[Political Junkie Too]

There is only one form of reform that could possibly work, TERM LIMITS.

I still think the best election reform is to eliminate the elections. There may be other problems introduced by the states appointing the Senators instead of the sheeple voting them in, but you'd get rid of 33 of the most expensive campaigns every two years.

Why does Tom Daschle have 85% of his campaign financing coming from outside South Dakota? If the SD legislature appointed their two Senators, you wouldn't have this intrusion on their state business. How much did Corzine spend on his campaign? How much did Hillary! spend? Remember the Feinstein/Huffington race in California? Torricelli is next up to spend to save his seat. Why?

This can all be eliminated by eliminating the elections in the first place.

-PJ

[x]

So far as I can see, Madison is arguing that things which in no way fit under the powers granted to the federal government, things which go against the purposes of the Constitution, like destroying the freedom of the press or the right to trial by jury cannot be justified under the Constitution by the "necessary and proper clause." I don't think anyone would disagree. Madison goes further in saying that the power to tax doesn't include the power of the federal government to change inheritance or contract law. I believe these are still taken care of by states or by the common law.

Some things were to be forbidden to the federal government, and some areas were to be outside of its reach. But there was also to be room for the federal government to use it's "implied powers" to fulfill the powers expressly delegated to it by the Constitution. Here is Madison explaining why the "necessary and proper" clause was indeed necessary and proper. And here is Hamilton. There are more documents from the founders bearing on this question here. You might check this one example of how Madison reads the Constitution: roads and lighthouses, necessary and proper; canals, no; dredging harbors and rivers -- it depends. I don't have the time to make a thorough study, but my impression is that there is more Constitutional leeway for the federal government than Sobran believes.

[ArneFufkin]

B.A. ... I read your well conceived and intentioned comments ... and everything you say and concern is TRUE! BUT ... you are saying and concerning these things OPENLY, without fear, with your children clothed, housed, fed, secure and well educated. Get it? Only in America are these things a given.

People here on FR who feel overwhelmingly aggrieved are despicable little rodents. They don't know what they have, I'm not gonna listen to what they've lost. They are fattened losers.

[x]

So far as I understand him, Madison is saying that the "necessary and proper clause" of the Constitution can't be stretched to destroy freedom of the press or the right to trial by jury. He's right about that. That clause can't be used to negate the rest of the Constitution. It is interesting, though, that a Bill of Rights was felt necessary to make this explicit. He goes on to say that the clause also couldn't be used by the federal government to change inheritance or contract laws. So far as I know these are still dealt with by the states, or by the common law.

There are powers that aren't given to the federal government. There may also be those that can't fit under the implied powers of the federal government in the Constitution. But those implied powers do give the federal government a wide leeway. Sobran is just wrong if he argues that the federal government can only do those things specifically and expressly mentioned in the Constitution. To execute the powers delegated in the Constitution and to fulfill its objectives it's inevitable that the federal government will take on more tasks. You can find more information about the founders on the "necessary and proper clause" here. The founders, as opposed to those who wanted to reject the Constitution, recognized that the federal government would have more powers than had been granted to it by the Articles of Confederation.

[B. A. Conservative]

We have two presidential elections before 2012. The financial wheels are turning and after 2012, SS and Medicare rapidly go out of reach. We turn this ship around before 2010 or there probably won't be enough time left.

I will be posting the summary of this thread soon. I will probably finish the analysis tonight or early tomorrw. I will post the summary along with the next question and start of a new thread.

[B. A. Conservative]

"They could have written a Constitution that much more decisively restricted the powers of the federal government by using the word "expressly", but they chose not to do so."

Why look farther than the Constitution itself?

Amendment X
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.
Bill of Rights

[B. A. Conservative]

"I am opposed to term limits. Why give a choice away?"

Then you have the government you deserve and you have not thought carefully enough to recognize the fallacies of your choices.

As a separate aside, every Congressman and Senator makes decisions that every American has to live with. But 99% never get to cast a ballot for or against the Congressman or Senators outside of their own districts or states respectively. I would have no problem with them being able to stay, if after two terms that had to stand for national elections. If you are not willing to remove them from office, then I would like to have a shot at it since they are making laws that affect my life too.

[Teacher317]

bumping a great (almost flame-free!) thread

[Bigun]

MARKER BUMP!