Posted on 04/04/2002 10:13:48 AM PST by 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?
Why people in countries like Brazil or Mexico are poor is worth thinking about, but it is true that such countries haven't developed extensive welfare states, while most wealthier countries have. There may be counterexamples, but this relationship is also worth thinking about. Simply assuming that secession would change this may be naive.
...surplus, there will be people who will try to take it
->In a country where everyone is armed, the unproductive don't usually try to take it, at least not directly. Normally, they employ politicians to do it for them.
I certainly don't disagree with this. It's pretty much what I said.
-> Again you show your socialists tendencies in failing to recognize that governments compete with each other just as do corporations and other businesses. Check the tax incentives offered to relocating businesses if you think otherwise. Because of the dominance achieved by the federal government, much of the competition between states has been eliminated because the Democrats in power in the federal government decreed and provided carrots and sticks to the states to adopt model codes and regualtions. Without this top down forced uniformity, regional nation/states would be looking at a highly mobile population using the internet to screen for the things that appeal to them.
That "highly mobile population using the Internet" is already here -- and on a global scale. Whether relocating our telemarketing and data processing to India will make Americans happier, wealthier or freer is another question worthy of discussion. But what you want is virtually here, and on a scale that boggles the mind. There is some logic in allowing states more leeway, but that question is dwarfed by global competition and the exploitation of competitive advantages by countries like Mexico or China.
Had we taken the road of true "state sovereignty" that some recommend, though, we wouldn't have this degree of mobility on the national level, though. States would use that sovereignty to impose regulations on trade and extract money where they could, just as the federal government does, and just as the states do when they can. Our national market was an outgrowth of the movement away from state sovereignty. The "sovereign states" before the Civil War wouldn't allow the mobility for labor we take for granted.
There may not much point in arguing with someone who thinks that he can look into the hearts of others or that people he disagrees with are crazy. But for the record, I've never been a liberal or a socialist. I have gotten really burned out on all this secession talk.
All governments with elections and universal suffrage are dominated by political elites who get elected by promising people things. All economies are dominated by economic elites whose primary purpose is to get profits and whose concern for political or moral values is subordinated to this imperative. These are the two dominant forces in every state and every industrialized country. The idea that somehow breaking the country apart will change this is unfounded.
The same sorts of people with the same motivations hold power in Massachusetts and Mississippi, though the relations between political and economic elites may differ. They have to put up with different preferences from different publics, but they do their best to turn out similar results wherever they are. What makes you think that secession or partition would change that?
People want to believe that secession would make "people like us" come to power, rather than the kind of people who usually end up exercising power. Given how the world works now, what evidence is there for this?
Consider that people a generation ago moved to low tax, less government states to get away from high taxation and excessive regulation. Today a lot of those states are tilting Democratic and inclining towards more taxes and more government.
Development has changed these states, and those migrants or their children or the people who followed them are now voting in Democrats. There may be a state whose political culture is strong enough to resist the change (say, Utah), but the change that other states have gone through (New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona, maybe the Carolinas, etc.) is something that all would-be secessionists should reflect upon.
The very process that you refer to of states angling to get new contracts and development will help to thwart any hopes from secession. Competition for investment makes elites in Southern states want to take down the Confederate battle flag and makes Salt Lake want to appear more like New York or Los Angeles.
That global competition for investments and markets is no friend to strong local governments or distinctiveness among states and localities. Competition tends to mean making a place attractive to increasingly homogenous elites of bankers and CEOs, and this may not reflect people's own moral values.
Competition between localities does help lower taxes, but it also gets us big sports and arts projects that take more out of our pockets.
All governments with elections and universal suffrage are dominated by political elites who get elected by promising people things.
All democracies fail in banruptcy. Ours will be no exception. If the Constitution can be re-established, our government is a republic, not a democracy. And the Constitution was expressly written to protect us from a tyranny of the majority. Absolute limits were imposed on federal powers. Much of the extension of state and local government power was actually imposed in top down fashion through model legislation imposed or induced by Congress on State and local governments. It is this huge overhang or burden of law at every level that empowers government at the expense of the individual people that motivates my desire for a part of the discussion for reform to be on secession.
Speaking for myself alone, government has reached an intolerable level. I am not willing to wait a life time or generations to correct the abuse of power that has resulted from the growth of government. I want my freedom back. As one man, I don't have the power to take it back at the point of a gun. But if there are others in this land of ours that feel trapped and oppressed, then by pooling our ideas and resources, maybe, just maybe, we can recruit others or change the minds of others who will use their minds to look for ways that will help us all find additional freedoms. Who knows, maybe we might find a way to change the status quo of the United States itself. But realistically, I think this is unlikely. I am not content and refuse to accept this as the way things are and the way they are going to be. I am not going to roll over and chain myself to make it easier for the masters to deal with renegade slaves like me. It ain't going to happen that way. And I am not going to support efforts to transfer greater amounts of the wealth of my family to politicians so that they can use it to buy votes to enhance their power over me and the remaining assets I have.
The United States is sitting on the edge of an abyss. The politicians have made financial promises that cannot be kept. Sometime in the next fifteen years we are going to have financial chaos that will bring down our existing government. Government cannot pay the amounts promised, and it is not going to be able to tax the people or monetize the obligation. We have some time before this tidal wave of unfunded liabilities hits our shores and swamps us. If sanity is restored to our government, sanity will return to our financial structure before it is too late. I am convinced that sanity is not going to be restored politically. Can it be restored by law? Maybe. Are there other ways to restore the Constitution? That is exactly why I am trying to foster this discussion.
If there are no apparent solutions to turning the country around, then I see secession as a viable method to my particular concerns. I recognize the risks and the problems. While I freely acknowledge that the US is still the freest and by far the best nation on earth, that does not equate to what is acceptable to me if there are conceiveably other ways to grab the freedom I want and demand for myself. And if there are enough like me who are willing to attempt secession, then let our blood be on the hands of the tyrannts in Washington that would use force to stop us. Maybe then the rest of the people will recognize their chains and cast them off.
An amendment to the CFR bill asked only that the legislation not violate the first amendment...it failed.
Those who voted had taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Until then they at least paid lip service in an attempt to fool their constituancies.
In actuality it was broken when the South lost to the North, in effect repealing the 10th amendment. And no, we'll never regain our dear republic through voting. It will take a revolution, but then there aren't enough of us to pull that off either.
Sorry to be so pessimistic/realistic, one of the few good reasons it is good to be old...
I feel quite hopeless that our country can ever be restored to its 'original intent'. It seems impossible to re-educate the entire nation on the meaning of the constitution. Even if they could be taught, the masses wouldn't agree with it any more.
We still have the Constitution, which can still be amended by the original process.Tell me just how Shays-Meehan complies with the First Amendment's absolute prohibition of any federal law abridging free speech, and which Amendment superceded the First.
Tell that to the Branch Davidians...Neo-cons are the anti-intellectual curse of our political fate. American Exceptionalism will save us all, right?
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." 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.
Just as a means of throwing down the guantlet: Everything that Democrats say or believe is wrong. 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.
Two of my threads on this are:
The Elegant Campaign Finance Reform
-PJ
America saved the world from authoritarianism, fascism and communism in the 20th Century. Only America is capable of defeating the terrorist menace gripping the world today. The priciples of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution and Republic remain the beacon and hope for freedom for the people of the world. American prosperity reminds the despots and the planners that freedom produces wealth and socialism produces poverty.
I will fear for America when Americans start emigrating to other countries instead of foreigners walking across deserts and hiding in cargo holds desperate to try to come to America.
Yes, I believe it is.
As I was thinking about that question, I looked at the Federal government as the Mr, and the American people as the Mrs. in a marriage. Soon after the vows were taken, Mr. America stepped outside the bounds of the marriage and started taking liberties (yes, pun intended). Like most cases of cheating, the wife is the last one to know and the cheater continues and gets bolder and more brazen.
When found out, she would surely divorce him. Or so I thought. But, he promises to behave and she believes him and they reconcile. But cheaters cheat and so the cycle continues. The costs of divorce are high, so she endures.
Other times, though, even when she knows, she looks the other way. There may be benefits that accrue to her while he cheats. She may put up with the philandering husband because of the pleasantries that come her way - the fur coat, the luxury auto, the country club life style or just that she still has a way to feed the kids and no other reasonable recourse.
Well, in this marriage I believe that the philandering husband has ventured far beyond cheating, the costs far exceed the bounty we get in return for looking the other way. The marriage is a mockery of the vows. It's a MINO.
What Mrs. America has to be made aware of is that Mr. America is not just cheating on the marriage vows, but has gone way beyond that to destroying the whole foundation of marriage and the equivalent of having his way with the kids.
He is waging war with the minds, hearts, and souls of the children - Their minds with the education system that fails to educate; Their hearts with Godless and ungodly policies that destroys personal responsibility; Their souls with the self indulgent social welfare programs that uproot personal initiative. If this happens, there is no new generation to carry on a once proud heritage.
Yes, this marriage is irretrievably broken. Only Mrs. America still doesn't know it. Worse yet. She doesn't believe it when you tell her and continues to look away.
I don't think it's even a question of whether or not the Constitution is tested, violated, ignored, whatever you want to call it. I can't imagine that that was ever a question. Else, why go to the trouble to set up all the weights and counterweights and superfluities that are designed to keep things in check?
Some of these systems have repeatedly failed. The people, in their role as safeguards of liberty, have proven to be disappointing performers. Certainly not Six Sigma quality output (99% defect-free). The Supreme Court has been an occasional menace. So has the Congress. But who do we have to blame for it?
I say ourselves. The reason why we don't ever "clean up Washington" or "restore America" is because we as a people are incapable of it. The tools are all there. But there are no Jeffersons and Madisons and Adamses around today.
I don't think it's even a question of whether or not the Constitution is tested, violated, ignored, whatever you want to call it. I can't imagine that that was ever a question....That IS the question. What part of "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..." does Congress, President Bush, and you do not get? Shays-Meehan is a direct and open violation of the Constitution as there is no provision contained later in the Constitution to allow Congress any exceptions to the absolute prohibition on its powers to limit speech.
Else, why go to the trouble to set up all the weights and counterweights and superfluities that are designed to keep things in check?We've already blown through 2 of the 3 express checkpoints (Congress itself and the President). I'm not overly confident that the third (the Supreme Court) won't also be blown through.
The point is that Congress, with President Bush's acquiescence, has directly and openly violated the Constitution. In the past, when various political interests wanted to sneak one by us, they would actually try to hide its un-Constitutionality by claiming some sort of Constitutional authority to pass it. Even the "New (Raw) Deal" and the War Powers Act claimed to have a Constitutional basis. This is not so with CFR, and any number of other federal laws passed in the last decade or so. With CFR, Congress and President Bush, with his signature, have claimed a power that is expressly forbidden of them.
Some of these systems have repeatedly failed. The people, in their role as safeguards of liberty, have proven to be disappointing performers. Certainly not Six Sigma quality output (99% defect-free). The Supreme Court has been an occasional menace. So has the Congress. But who do we have to blame for it?Finally, something that we agree on. Even with the balance of powers, we the people have let our final say slip away to a bunch of hucksters who, if they were in any other profession, would have been thrown out and imprisoned inside of 3 years. I'm nowhere charismatic enough to even think about competing in the current political arena, so all I can do is try to find like-minded people that are better-looking and better-spoken than me.I say ourselves. The reason why we don't ever "clean up Washington" or "restore America" is because we as a people are incapable of it. The tools are all there. But there are no Jeffersons and Madisons and Adamses around today.
I disagree that we are completely incapable of cleaning things up. However, time is wasting, because we're now headed through the second generation that has been taught essentially NOTHING about civic duty other than to vote for the RAT and hold their hands out. Meanwhile, most of the people left that still believe in the Constitution and the limited federal government that it provides are aging and dying off. Now is our last stand; either we can sit idly by and let the last light of freedom be extinguished for 2 millenia until another Jefferson, Adams and Madison emerges from the black of oppression, or we can try to relight the beacon of hope.
Don't have an answer yet, but either way, it is alarming. Either I was totally oblivious (translated: ignorant) to the surroundings or the U S is broken and even with the power of the net, we still can't stop that train.
In actuality it was broken when the South lost to the North, in effect repealing the 10th amendment.You're about 4 years off in that assessment. It was broken when the Civil War started (when the South couldn't abide the results of the 1860 election and the North couldn't abide the South's secession); the end merely threw the first broken pieces (the 9th and 10th Amendments) into the Dumpster.
And no, we'll never regain our dear republic through voting. It will take a revolution, but then there aren't enough of us to pull that off either.I was afraid you'd say that. Call me an optimist, but right now is the last opportunity to pull off the restoration. It's iffy at best because of the array of forces against us, from both political parties to the media to the education system (which is nearing its third generation of brainwashing), but it's either now or 2000 years from now when someone on some far-flung, isolated planet rediscovers what the Founding Fathers set out to do. As I don't see time lasting another 2000 years, it's now or never.
Was that also an attempt at a clever interpretation of the Constitution. When in doubt consult the writers of the document.
From Federalist Papers #41
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.
Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."
But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
Income tax day is almost upon us. According to things I have seen in print, taxes are the singlest largest item in any family's budget, not savings for retirement, not food, not shelter, nor anything else. Is is freedom to see your wealth and future retirement confiscated by politicians seeking re-election who intend to give it to their constituents?
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. And if you have taken the time to read it, it is absolutely meaningless. I could write a more meaningful code on the back of an envelope, and there is no one who would think it unfair or confusing.
Look at the rest of the US code, state codes, municipal codes and the train loads of regulations that are issued by governments. Do you believe these laws and regulations extend your rights and freedoms while empowering you to make decisions or are they more likely to limit your ability to make choices and/or decisions while empowering a government bureaucrat to make that decision for you. Do these rules and laws make you more or less free?
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? Presumably some of these rules affect your livelihood and some area of life in which you have expertise. I have met my fair share of government bureaucrats. There are exceptions, but over whelmingly they represent the dregs of any career area. They are generally the least skilled and most incompetent to make decisions especially in areas where private citizens have demonstrated their ability to excel. Planning by private committee is generally not efficient. Government planning is an oxymoron. Socialism fails every time it is tried. How long are we going to have to wait in this country before we admit that it has failed again. The unfunded liabilities of SS and Medicare are going to start coming due in spades in about ten years. By then it will be too late to save anything. Rome is on fire, how long will you ask us to let it burn?
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